A good mother can make a bad situation better. I just read Valentina Valentini’s piece in Indie Wire, Mark Webber Wants Your Money But He Can’t Tell You Why, about actor/director Mark Webber’s Kick Starter Campaign. He’s raising money for a movie he’s making about his mother. It’s a secret, but he did give his mother’s name. So I googled Cheri Lynn Honkala and was blown away.
Good mothers do a lot to help a child through all kinds of adversities. Children rely on a parent’s resilience, reassurance, optimism, and love. Homelessness and economic poverty are terribly difficult conditions to live with. Cheri Lynn Honkala did more than surmount them. She went on to become an anti-poverty activist. Yet, she did even more than that for her son.
There are different kinds of poverty. Emotional poverty, not having enough love, brings terrible suffering for a child. That’s as traumatic as economic poverty, usually more so. Love can help a child through almost anything. Emotional deprivation, however, creates lifelong problems.
By all appearances, Cheri Lynn Honkala didn’t leave Mark Webber emotionally impoverished. It’s not easy to be a mother under the best of circumstances. She may have been poor. Yet, she had the strength, the fight, and the love to get them through. I can’t wait for the movie to tell me more. Good luck with your Kick Starter Campaign, Mark!
BENT