Kay Wade
Shaped by Adversity
We’ve come to the South Carolina coast for both business and pleasure, a short few days to watch birds and discuss a future book highlighting the mystery and wonder of the Jocassee Gorges. A morning walk with Mica the Magnificent (canine) takes us along the shoreline and back up through a maritime forest studded with live oak, past an interpretive sign for The Octopus Tree. The subtitle below reads “Shaped by Adversity.” How apropos. It’s a cruel irony how the things we most admire, the things we stop to photograph, or record with written word, are most often things shaped and given “character” by adversity: mountains, carved by eons of weather, trees, bent and twisted, souls, shaped into more relatable humans by grief or hardship than by good fortune or easy living. Like the Octopus Tree we might find ourselves knocked over, uprooted, facing unprecedented challenges, yet somehow surviving, growing stronger, and becoming, eventually, more of an inspiration than we ever imagined we might be. ~K
Adversity takes many shapes.
Sometimes, it comes in the most sudden and unexpected ways.
Sometimes, it comes to those we love the most.
Sometimes, it reveals a depth of unexpected grace.
Sometimes, it allows us to show how much we care, even when we can’t quite express the emotion.
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