Sara Christensen

March 13, 2002

Dear Whirly Girls,

I would like to nominate Sara Christensen.  She is a wonderful friend and also the most admirable person I know.  This story of the past four years will only begin to share her strength. 

After college Sara and her storybook boyfriend engaged and married. Everything was wonderful and I always considered them to be the ideal relationship.  About four years ago, when they had been married a couple years and now considering starting a family, Sara found out her mother had breast cancer.  There was not a question of surviving, only how long. Although this in itself is very devastating, the hardest part for Sara was thinking about her younger brother and sister, ages 6 and 9 at the time. Neither of the kids had ever known their fathers, and they both had different fathers.  This of course meant that the kids either went to foster care together or to their fathers separately.  Sara had experienced a rough enough childhood herself and wouldn't bear to see them be thrown aside in all of the commotion.

Immediately she started talking with her mother about making sure the kids would be turned over to her.  Although her mom was in extreme denial she agreed to sign custody paperwork.  At this point Sara's responsibility consisted of taking her mom to the doctor for treatments to slow the progression and also to alleviate the pain of the treatments.  After about one year Sara's mom was no longer capable of taking care of the kids so they moved in with Sara and her husband.  The relationship had been very stressful with Sara committing so much time to her mother.  Her husband continued to become very jealous of the time and extremely unsupportive.

Sara knowing there was no other option she would be comfortable with continued with her efforts for the kids and her mom.  He left her after he realized the kids would not be moving back with their mom, he said he only wanted children of his own.  After the divorce was finalized he was nice enough to give her one month to buy him out of the house which she desperately needed to stay in.  Not only because she couldn't afford to buy another but also because she would truly go crazy if she had to add buying a house to her pile of to do's.  The heart break of her true love was very hard to work though with all of this but she didn't want the kids to think it was their fault so she continued to preach that things work out the way they are meant.

As time went on it became financially  hard  being the kids did not get child support from their fathers  and her mother was not working.  So what did she do, she opened her own consulting business.  She worked all day, came home to take care of everything on the home front and then stayed up until 3:00-4:00 a.m. to keep her clients happy.  She was a marathon runner, extremely  athletic, but now it has been years since she has run or done anything for herself.

Sara told me of the revelation  she had once about the important things in life, not clothes, gossip, where you hang out after work - simply giving to others. Her mom continued to slip away as the cancer spread throughout her organs. It was the slowest progression of pain I've ever encountered.  Her mom finally died last month.  She had been in a wheelchair for 21/2 years, couldn't answer more than half of the questions asked of her for two years and at 5'6" tall weighed 72 lbs.  The whole time she was fighting to make sure she saw as much of her kids as possible.  I have not ever seen a person endure so much utter pain.

Since her husband left and she opened her business it has been a long haul. But she is thriving.  She is as radiant as any woman could be.  Don't get me wrong, she is always pushing and pulling at herself to get everything done but it is all about her attitude on life.  She lives life grateful for everything that she has, every opportunity, every person, every laugh and even in the worst of times believes that she will get though and learn something.  And the kids are amazing, they have adapted to all of this change and turmoil and from Sara's example (and a lot of love and patience) been able to come up for air between the hard times.

This is such a brief overview of this past four years, and there is so much more to the sacrifices Sara has made - all though her life for her mom.  One could never measure the respect I have for her, for the way that she has always done for others because she believed it was right.  I have a lot of wonderful women in my life but know no one who can juggle as much, be as courageous, resourceful and tolerant in life and always with a smile on her face.

I hope you will see that she is a true Whirlygirl!

Thank You - Jessie Huff