Mother Love and Open Heart Creates Safe Haven
Every Mother’s Day, her phone rings off the hook! Jamie Thomson, from a small Southern Alberta community, demonstrates resilience, mother love, and an open door to youth. Jamie goes beyond the term, good enough mother.
I met Jamie, while taking an online Positive Psychology course. She has given me permission to give you a taste of her heartfelt story of generosity.
Since 1995, Jamie has taken in, and helped raise, over 70 youth who came to her seeking help to recover from all forms of abuse such as bullying, rape, domestic abuse, self mutilation and addiction.
She used her life skills and experiences to guide them, teach them and give them the best head start she could provide on her own dime. They never needed to worry about anyone hurting them and they were kept safe.
Jamie says, “All of them had the courage to come to me. They needed someone to be there for them and to believe in them. My door is open to any youth who has the courage to ask for my help, so long as they abide by my few, yet strict, rules.”
This Mother Rules:
- Do not lie to me.
- Do not steal from me.
- Pull your own weight around the house; help with the dishes, clean up after yourself, do chores.
- Respect my home and everyone in it.
- Do not engage in underage use of alcohol or smoking. If you want it, you buy it. I only supply the necessities.
- Most important: DO SOMETHING TO BETTER YOURSELF!!! Go back to school, get a job and bank some money for your own place, attend counselling, attend AA or NA to clean up, or do what ever meets your needs.
Jamie attends meetings with youth until they feel comfortable going on their own. She has spent countless nights chasing away nightmares or just lending a shoulder for tears that needed to be shed.
Due to her own disrupted past, she swore she would do anything in her power to give any youth who came to her, a safe haven. She continues to do so, and says she will “As long as I have breath in my lungs and my heart is strong enough to beat. My kids are my life and my hope for the future.”
What are Jamie’s beliefs that, regardless of a workplace injury that limits her present day activity, she keeps on lending a helping and healing hand? Here is a glimpse of her answer:
Treasures
Far too often treasures are simply discarded due
To one’s blindness to the beauty hidden deep inside.
Though scarred by the sands of time, it is unwilling to break.
For it knows that someday, someone special will come.
Someone who is able to see beyond the pain and anger.
Someone who is able to see the true beauty hidden deep within.
For this reason it stands strong, and refuses to buckle under extreme pressure.
Though the wait is long and painful,
It knows that someday it will be rewarded with a place of belonging.
A place where it will be treasured forever.
~ Jamie Thomson~
Those who are resilient know their values, their passions, and what drives them to do good where they can. What causes you to readily open your door and heart with the warmth of mother love?
