Most of us are shaped by the slow and steady accumulations of circumstance: the influences of parents and other family members, education or work, the tenor of the times. Sometimes the winds howl and the rain pours down, testing us to the hilt or driving our battered vessel into a safe harbor, but for the most part we sail along on the calm waters of routine, custom, and habit.
Others, however, find themselves so shaken and battered by a single cataclysmic storm that their lives are forever changed. The gale eventually passes, and though the survivors carry on as best they can, the scars and consequences of the tempest they’ve endured last a lifetime.
