Since my parents were both hard workers, it was only natural, that my siblings and I were too.  At an early age, around 7 years old, I, along with my sister, took on a daily 6:00 A.M. paper route. I swear it was my sister’s idea. I can’t imagine that I would choose such a thing because I despise early mornings, and my sister feasts off of them. I would grow to loathe Sunday mornings, (didn’t the Lord say, ‘REST’?) and the sound of my name.   My sister would have to wake me, as I wasn’t getting up voluntarily, and she used a firm whisper, “Karen, Karen!”. That hard ‘K’ cut into my nerves as I jolted up out of bed.  The Sunday circulars, which we had to assemble, requiring an earlier rising time, were so heavy on my scrawny bony arms that it took twice as long to deliver the papers. Hills felt like mountains, and tips between a quarter and two dollars didn’t seem worth the trouble. Still, I stayed on with it, complaining time to time, but something deep in me knew that nothing tasted or felt as good to me without some struggle.  It was hard to take something for granted when so much effort was put into it, and it increased the character and value of anything sought after.   And even though it sounds crazy, something within me has always known that I ‘selected’ my parents.  I have a vague recollection of looking upon them, pre-birth, evaluating them.  As they had strong ethics, worked hard and embraced their struggles together, I declared,”I’ll take them.” Somehow, I always felt that the aspect of struggle, and their struggles, was connected to my life here on earth.  Though, I never imagined how I would struggle in life, love and work, and I certainly never imagined how I’d struggle to move away from the people I’d ‘chosen’ to struggle with, my parents, in order to move towards the most valuable person and asset in my earthly world: my true Self and my voice.