Life is not always easy. It can be compared to a two-sided coin. One side of the coin shows the pleasures, the other side of the coin shows the hardships. When everything goes smooth in our life, it's easy to accept it. The hard part is facing the hardships, the battles, the challenges.

In our life, there are many challenges we all have to face. They are part of our everyday life. What are challenges? They are situations, obscure, scary that demands us to take those big steps and throw ourselves into them, not knowing the outcome. They can turn out good or they can turn out bad. They can make us a strong person, a winner or they can make us a loser, a failure. The best thing we can do is to try, to take a chance, no matter what the result is. The worst thing we can do is doing nothing at all.

I have faced many challenges in my life. I was born in Italy. At the age of fifteen, I came to the U.S.A., a strange country, hardly knowing anybody. At the age of sixteen, I went to Cosmetology School, not knowing the English language, and received my license. I got my driving license, even though I didn't have a car. I owned a beauty salon, while my husband, who didn't have a job, was taking care of our young children. Later, I went to college, and at the age of fifty, I started writing children's stories, poems, and songs. Three years ago I published my first children's book "The Water Lily Fairy," which won the YATR 2013 Literary Awards Best Children's Book. Recently, I published "The Water Lily Fairy at the Ice Cream Palace," "La Fata delle Ninfee," and "Ants in MY Pants." Soon, I will have these other children's books published, "Julie and Her Seven Calves," "Mommy, Where Does Tiger Live?" "Mouse Goes to the Doctor," "Fingerprints in the Mirror," "The Street Where the Dollar Tree Grew," "My Name is Nobody," and many more. I plan to have my books in five different languages, English, Italian, French, Spanish, and Sicilian. Also, I wrote some poems that were published in the UAW Local 387 newspaper, in Michigan. The English language was the biggest challenge of my life. I never imagined I could write anything, especially children's books.

Sometimes, God calls the fools to confound the wise. I am open to what God is calling me to do in my life. When we overcome the obstacles in our life, we can then raise the flag up and say aloud, "I tried! I won!" Easy, hard, I wouldn't have my life any other way! Challenges have made me the person I am today.