You are not a failure unless you fail to try.....

Making The Grade

She knew that we are all products or our environment, allowing the outside atmosphere to permeate within us. She knew everyone had their negative days and that on those days she, like many others, wanted to crawl into a corner and never come out, feeling empty and valueless - any self-worth utterly vanished.

On one such day, her usually cheerful daughter came home from school completely despondent. Slowly and reluctantly she pulled out a test paper from her backpack and, with downcast eyes, asked her mother to sign it. She tried to fold over her low mark, but her mother did not even have to see the crumpled paper, as the sad look in her daughter's eyes told her more than any number on a paper could reveal - the low grade had made her feel like a valueless failure, and not worthy of being loved - she had worked so hard to score a top mark and could not understand why she had not succeeded.

Looking at her daughter, understanding so well her inner turmoil, she wondered how she could convey to her that she was loved, despite any failed endeavor. Being so intimately familiar with those feelings herself, she knew how important it was for her to reach into her daughter's sad eyes and explain to her that she was worth so much more than red pen marks on a paper - that no event in her day, or her life for that matter, could take away from her intrinsic worth - that nothing would diminish who she was, or how deserving of love she was and always would be.

Certainly she felt proud of her daughter's accomplishments when she succeeded, but she knew that was a form of pride, not love. And, of course she would continue to encourage her daughter to exert her greatest effort and extend herself to her limit, but only as a way of finding expression for her talents and capabilities. None of her daughter's successes, or failures, would ever increase or diminish one iota of her intrinsic worth. Nor would she allow them to alter,in any way, the unconditional love with which she would always encompass her.