The Challenge
She was troubled by her eighth grade essay assignment for school: to write about a significant challenge she had faced in life. She would be reading this essay in front of her class. “But I haven’t had a major challenge,” she bemoaned to her teacher. “Anna, aren’t your parents divorced?” As she relayed this to me, privately I felt proud that she needed that reminder – that she didn’t consider having divorced parents as being a challenge. I was scooting toward being self-congratulatory and smug until she told me she thought that would be a good topic to write about.