Breaking Barriers Sakina Mustan richer than anyone around us. As long as we had each other we felt complete and strong.
“You will die,” was my doctor’s prognosis. For me, life has always been a struggle as far back as I can remember. However, with strong family values and strength of character, traits instilled by my parents, I have learned to live gracefully with every curveball that life has thrown my way! My dad came to Bombay, Mumbai, The City of Dreams, from a tiny little village in India. He struggled due to lack of education and was painfully aware of every daunting aspect of survival in a city with cutthroat competition. Despite his own limitations of income and poor health, he managed to send all three of his daughters to private schools and colleges, for which he was eternally
However, dad’s time with us was short-lived - he passed away at the hospital from Muscular Dystrophy at the young age of 47 after being taken off a ventilator. I was only 15 years old at the time. Life became more of a struggle. My older sister started working and I tutored kids at home. We scrambled on and although we did not have much, my mom, being the person that she was, continued our dad’s legacy by always putting others first.
Eventually, both my elder sister and I got married. These happy moments also came Sakina, wearing a cteam colored shirt and with a sense of guilt that our brown pants, sits in her wheelchair. She is little sister, being single, was pictured on a sidewalk against the backdrop now left alone to fend for both of a purple sky and buildings behind her.
grateful. Education was very important to him as it was hard for him to read and write on his own.
herself and my mom, which she did bravely.
A couple of years into my marriage, my husband and Although we did not have much, our parents taught I decided to migrate to Canada with our two kids, us the importance of humility and compassion, not a son and a daughter. My husband went to Canada by preaching, but by living it. Extended family often before I did, and I joined him later with the kids to came from the village for treatments that were only what I thought was a new chapter in my life. Little available in the big city for illnesses such as cancer. did I know what awaited me! My parents welcomed them with open arms making sure they had everything they needed, even if we With dreams of a fresh start at age 27, I landed had to go without some things. When my aunt, my in Toronto with my kids. Within a few days of my dad’s sister, passed away, dad took her daughters arrival, I slid into a coma due to respiratory failure under his care. Sometimes he bought groceries for and woke up in the ICU, breathing on a ventilator. relatives in need before he got them for his own Soon living as a wheelchair user, my life as I had family. It was deeds such as this that made us feel known drifted into oblivion.
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