My wife is in India working on a focus group project . Yesterday, she relayed this story.
She was in a small room monitoring the discussion of some young moms and
how the facilitator interacted with them.
While she couldn’t understand what was being spoken, she certainly could
read the body language and the emotion being poured out. A young mom (about 20) was telling her
story. She was a child bride (married
at age 12). She had her first child at age
13 and the next at 14. Her husband was
an abusive alcoholic who would often beat her. One day, he pushed her off the
second floor and crushed one of her legs.
She now walks with great difficulty.
When the session was over, she came over to my wife and uncontrollably
sobbed and clung to her. Between her
sobs, she kept telling my wife something that she couldn’t understand. After a long time, she finally composed
herself and left. Through a translator,
my wife found out that the young woman was thanking her for caring enough to
listen. For all these years, she thought
that she was nothing and that nobody would listen or care to hear anything she
had to say. Through her tears, she was
thanking my wife for traveling thousands of miles to hear her and that maybe
her life did matter. After years of
abuse and hardship, she felt that someone finally cared about “her”.
As we prepare for our upcoming trip to Haiti, we cannot
overlook the impact that even our smallest actions might have on others. Something as simple as listening could have a
much greater impact than we would normally expect and it might just be the
something that brings hope and happiness to someone else.
“ Even the smallest
act of caring for another person is like a drop of water--- it will make
ripples throughout the entire pond”
Jessy and Bryan Matteo
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