Things I Have Been

Daughter, Granddaughter, niece, cry-baby child, student, sister, Catholic, teenage runaway, grocery store clerk, babysitter, page at The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, bill collector, advertising agency secretary, homeless, disowned, unwed mother, welfare recipient, scared, frightened, alone, hospital laboratory clerk, wife of a heroin addict, battered woman, atheist, divorcee, aunt, waitress, cocktail waitress, bartender, bar manager, rape victim advocate, suicide hotline worker, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, used car salesperson, wife of an alcoholic, step-mother, bitch, mother of two, mother of three, home health hospice worker, agnostic, housecleaner, chronically ill, divorcee, medic, firefigher, ambulance driver, content, CPR instructor, EMS instructor, dead tired, homeowner, mother-in-law, published poet, published freelance writer, mourner, Washingtonian, grandmother of 1, medical secretary, wife of a good man, deist, great-aunt, POA and parental caregiver, grandmother of two, unemployed housewife, happy.

[edited to add] Mary wrote and told me I had forgottn to add "good friend." So - consider it added.

That's about it - but it's enough and I wouldn't change a thing of it. Accomplishments are sometimes made simply by living through it and the greatest accomplishment is looking back and smiling and knowing that you got where you got by getting there.