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Hello everyone! This week, we are touched by the remarkable resilience found in tidal waves of unsung journeys. Aged creases behind the shining eyes of a 106-year-old Indigenous tattoo artist hints at a life well-lived. Matching "adoption day" shirts of a family of 10 unveils a stunning thread of care between a teen mom and the nurse who adopted her. "I knew it would be hard, but we'd figure it out." Across these stirring vignettes around the world, we are witness to the quality of resilience in being human. Somewhere, a heart overflows with compassion. No matter what gets thrown our way, we find ourselves connected, often in unexpected ways. Through the striking strands of humanity, selfless love doesn't always find us in the best circumstances. It disarmingly doesn't always look how we might expect. But it does find a way.
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Katrina Mullen
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Katrina Mullen, a neonatal nurse and single mother of five in Indiana, US, remembers being struck by her 14-year-old patient, who always sat with her premature triplets alone. She wondered why Shariya Small, then an 8th grader, never came with a packed lunch or snacks to eat. Triplets Serenitee, Samari, and Sarayah were born at 26 weeks, spending over five months in the neonatal intensive care unit in 2020. Mullen, having been a teen mom, ended up giving her phone number to Small, telling her to reach out to her if she needed to talk or had questions. Small was living on a couch at a relative's house when the US Department of Social Services (DSS) declared Small and her babies needed to be taken into foster care. Mullen, already a mom to three kids at home and two grown 20-something year-olds, didn't hesitate. "I knew it would be impossible to find a foster home that would take all four of them. No one was going to take a teen mom and her preemie triplets. I just kept thinking, I have to do this. I knew Shariya was intelligent and resilient and she just needed a safe place to put her roots. I knew it would be hard, but we'd figure it out," she said. Small, now 17, has graduated from an alternative high school with an A- average, and is exploring nearby colleges with plans to pursue a career in social work. After fostering Small and the triplets for 668 days, Mullen officially became Small's mom on February 6, 2023. "I'm so proud to be Shariya's mom," Mullen told Today, "She just amazes me every day. When she's frustrated with the babies, she never raises her voice. She's just blossoming into this incredible woman."
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Siddik Paravoor
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A new film on a Muslim woman from the southern Indian state of Kerala who raised three Hindu children, Ennu Swantham Sreedharan (Yours Truly, Sreedharan), has found resonance at a time when tales of polarisation and communal disharmony are regularly reported in India. Thennadan Subaidia, who died in 2019, took in Sreedharan and his two older sisters, Ramani and Leela, in 1976 after their mother died while giving birth to a fourth child. She already had two sons, Jafferkhan and Shanawas, and four years later, gave birth to a daughter, Joshina. The story made headlines in 2019 after Subaida's death. Sreedharan wrote an emotional tribute to his umma (as Malayali Muslims call their mother) on Facebook and many people wondered why a man with a Hindu name was calling his mother umma. Film director Siddik Paravoor was among the many people inspired by the post. "There is so much of humanism in this story that the society needs to know,'' he says.
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Lee | Wikimedia Commons
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Vogue Philippines has decided to feature a 106-year-old tattoo artist from the mountain village of Buscalan in Philippines' Kalinga province on the cover of its April issue. Thousands of people from around the world have made the pilgrimage to Buscalan to get symbols of the Kalinga tribe -- signifying strength, bravery, and beauty -- tattooed on their skin by Apo Whang-Od, who is the country's oldest mambabatok or traditional Kalinga tattooist. According to Vogue Philippines editor-in-chief Bea Valdes, Whang-Od, who has become the oldest person ever to grace the cover of Vogue magazine, represents what is beautiful about Filipino culture. "We believe that the concept of beauty needs to evolve, and include diverse and inclusive faces and forms. What we hope to speak about is the beauty of humanity," Valdes added.
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Paster John Jackman holds a debt-burning ceremony | Trinity Moravian Church
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More than 3,000 residents of North Carolina's Davidson County are free from medical debt after the Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem purchased, and forgave, almost $3 million of their medical bills. It is part of an ongoing Debt Jubilee Project that partners with RIP Medical Debt to purchase and forgive medical debts in the area. Last year, they purchased $1.65 million worth of debt for 1,356 people in Forsyth and Davidson counties. "The medical system is so broken," says Rev. John Jackman, pastor of Trinity Moravian Church. "Most of these families were making a go of it until someone has to go into the hospital for a few days or to the doctor for a serious (medical condition)." Outstanding medical bills often end up being sold to a third-party collection agency for pennies on the dollar, giving it the legal right to collect the full amount of the debt or, as in the Debt Jubilee Project, forgive the debt.
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Insulate Ukraine
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Cambridge University student Harry Blakiston Houston created the Insulate Ukraine project to replace bullet and bomb damaged windows. According to the United Nations, millions of people in Ukraine live in buildings with insufficient protection. "We've come up with a solution that makes a real difference," Blakiston Houston said. He has paused his biotechnology studies to concentrate on the initiative, which has already installed hundreds of windows across Ukraine. The window design uses polyethylene, PVC piping, pipe insulation and duct tape to create four layers of insulation. It costs around £12 per square meter of window (about $15/10 square feet), and can be built at home in 15 minutes. "Part of Putin's war is about trying to make people in Ukraine cold and miserable. It's about breaking their resolve to actually continue defending themselves. We're essentially empowering Ukrainians because we're giving them a way to solve this problem for themselves," Blakiston Houston said.
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