A toddler in an emotionally explosive and unstable family has her leg amputated. In spite of significant hurdles, she powers through to become a successful career woman and equally successful single parent.
Wendy Sura Thomson is a 5-star author of Summon the Tiger, The Third Order, The Man from Burnt Island, and Postcards from the Future (as a contributing author.) She has several more works underway. She lives in Michigan with her beloved Setters and covets sipping coffee outdoors first thing in the morning, rain or shine., listening to the waterfall and the birds and watching [often with amusement] the pups explore.
It took me over fifty years to actually speak that statement aloud. It is a difficult thing to accept. And when an emotionally impaired parent has a physically disabled child, the consequences can be profound.
To this day, I cannot, with perfect certainty, say that the resolve I used to rise above a panoply of other challenges thrown my way through the years was in spite of my childhood, or because of it.
Book Excerpt
Summon the Tiger
I was born with congenital abnormalities… I was missing both the ulna and the tibia on my right side. My radius and fibula were bowed inward, and my right hand’s middle and index finger were webbed together, the index finger a mere stub. I have no right thumb and my wrist is noticeably clubbed. That arm from the elbow down is quite unattractive and is now a good nine inches shorter than my left. I vaguely remember being told that for a time I was in a leg brace to try and straighten and support my right leg, but I do not remember. I was told that at two months old my mother shipped me off to my grandmother in Cleveland while she investigated facilities that took in disabled children. I don’t know how long I was with my grandmother, but after visiting several institutions my mother decided that perhaps I didn’t need to be shuttled off to one of them. She saw severely disabled children and decided maybe I wasn’t so bad after all. That fact haunted me – I would not be surprised if it still does. My mother didn’t want me. I was so far from perfect.
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