To say that she had a positive effect on me would be an understatement. I can still hear clearly many of her seemingly millions of sayings that I had little appreciation for at the time. One that stands out is her warning not to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. She had noticed a tendency I had to make bad situations worse with a smart mouth and a bad attitude. I was pretty good at turning one day after school into three.
Childhood is perhaps the most karmic period of life.
As children we have no control over how the adults in our lives behave. We are at the mercy of forces that we have little understanding of. But as we grow older we become more and more responsible for the conditions of our lives. As we attain greater understanding of spiritual realities, we come to realize that as adults we are almost completely responsible. As adults, the frying pans that we find ourselves in are of our own making, forged in our mistakes and misunderstandings.