Stories of Kindness from Around the World

18 years ago I discovered I was unexpectedly pregnant, I was on my own and in an extremely limited financial situation. I worked at a pet shop, a job I loved, but cleaning cages with unrelenting nausea was pretty awful to deal with. Having little money, and unable to keep anything down, I started losing weight instead of gaining it.

There was a neighbor woman I had visited with a couple of times, and to my surprise, she started working at the pet shop too. Everyday, for lunch, she would produce large, organic salads and other very healthy meals. To my surprise she insisted that I have some of her lunch. I tried to refuse, but she was determined. Puzzled, I managed to eat, and when I admitted to everyone at work that I was pregnant, she was very excited, and kept on feeding me, despite the fact that I couldn't hold it down for very long.

She had a medical background, and was a lay midwife, and told me that the body very efficiently directed the nutrition to my developing baby, even if the meal didn't stay put for long. All through my pregnancy she was a guardian angel, looking after me, she and her husband keeping me supplied with fresh produce. We became very close friends, and she and her husband even attended my daughter's birth, with her as my coach. They ended up taking us into their home and we became part of their family.

One day I mentioned how much I appreciated how she had shared her lunch with me when we worked at the pet shop. She smiled a secretive smile, and when I asked her about it, she told me that another friend had noticed that my refrigerator was shockingly empty back then, and she reported the fact to my soon to be guardian angel! She told me she prayed about it and felt led to get a job where I worked so that she could look after me without me knowing why she was there. "I just knew you were part of our family!" she said. I was stunned and amazed as I considered this new information. Here I had been alone and pregnant and poor, only to be taken under wing by this woman.

This is, to me, just another of the endless miracles that have lifted me up through my life. In reality I was never alone.