Hi, I’m Ann. I invite you to join me on the journey through life. Let’s walk through the ups and downs of caring for our families, raising our children, launching them into adulthood, caring for our parents as they age, and caring for ourselves.
As I was thinking about what I could share with you, an online friend announced a program for helping businesses get through this Covid-19 crisis and get our economy going again. In his email he said this:
“You need to understand that your business is crucial even if you don’t think it’s relevant to this crisis. If your business is selling wigs for antique dolls, it is crucial. If it moves money, America needs it. Period.”
Ray Edwards (no relation)
Hmmm, wigs for antique dolls, interesting. You see, I have an antique doll in my closet. Her name is Lynn. She was given to me by my grandmother when I was a little girl. She found an old doll in pieces in my great aunt’s attic. She cleaned her up, put her back together, made beautiful clothes for her, and glued on a new wig she made out of yarn. Lynn is beautiful, and I have loved her ever since that magical day when my grandmother gave her to me for Christmas. But there is more of a story behind my grandmother and antique dolls.
At the beginning of the Great Depression, my mother was a little girl and her parents were living in Florida. The bottom dropped out of Florida real estate before the Depression hit the rest of the country, and suddenly there was no money. Many people lost their jobs, and my grandfather’s sales business dried up overnight. How were they going to eat?
My grandmother always saw possibilities in life. She thought about what she could do. Then she looked around at her friends and saw that parents didn’t have enough money to buy new dolls for their little girls for Christmas, so she started a Doll Hospital on her kitchen table. She would take in people’s old dolls, clean them up, fix broken arms or legs, make them new clothes, and make new yarn wigs for dolls whose hair had gotten all ratty! Parents were able to find a little money to pay her to do this, so that they would have something pretty to give their little girls for a birthday or Christmas.
So, wigs and clothes for those old dolls saved the day!!! They made a lot of little girls and their parents very happy, and they put food on the table for my grandparents and their children. You see, with God’s help, there is always a way!
I would love to have you join me on my journey, as we go through life and find a way. A way to care for our kids, care for our parents, and care for ourselves. A way to live, a way to love, a way to rejoice, a way to thrive.