
A girl who was never meant to survive - gadders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/haven_shepherd
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RedBee
I'm always impressed how people manage to go to "why not me though?" after
thinking about "why me?". It's a sign of a strong and life-aware person. We
usually gives us reasons why we shouldn't do something and then there's no
guilt not to think about why we should do it. It's sad because there could be
so many more stories like this one if more of us had will to go to positive
side first or at least after thinking about the negative side.

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RankingMember
I think a lot of which direction a person goes when faced with adversity has
to do with their upbringing. I feel that, had she been left in Vietnam in an
orphanage, it may have been a much different story with regard to her outlook.

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eric_b
I've noticed lately that a lot of the "heartwarming" stories I read have a
common thread: religion. People do good things not because it makes objective
sense, but because their faith compels them to do the right thing. I'm sure
plenty of non-religious people do great things too - but I wager the
percentage is higher for those who are devoted to something "higher than
themselves". (I say this as a person who is, at best, considered non-
religious)

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btilly
According to the book _Enlightenment Now_ , the difference isn't faith. It is
being involved in a community organization, which churches happen to be.

Religious people who do not go to church are no more likely to volunteer than
non-religious people. Non-religious people who are involved in community
organizations are no less likely to volunteer than religious ones.

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froghash
How can ever parents do something like this. I can't imagine how did she
survived, not just physically but emotionally.

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dsfyu404ed
Kids can be surprisingly durable in pretty much every way imaginable.

Edit: We're talking about one bad event early in childhood here, not spending
an entire childhood with abusive parents.

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saiya-jin
Yes but then you meet them as adults and they exhibit (and unsuccessfully try
to hide) tons of mental issues due to messed up childhood. Usually revolves
around trusting others in relationships and this trickles down to many aspects
of their lives

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RankingMember
Yeah, I've seen it both ways. Some people have learned to bottle up their
negative childhoods, leading to various outward behavioral clues, while others
seem like they were able to get past it somehow and live truly without that
baggage holding them back.

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amerkhalid
Recently, I was reading Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina. IIRC, he said
that normally people will have permanent psychological damage and but a few
humans seem to get past childhood trauma. There are some genes which seem to
make children more resilient. So resilience might be partially hereditary.

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izzydata
It sounds like she "was" meant to survive.

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gumby
On mobile as you scroll through it cycles through some large photos, breaking
the flow of the text. I had to stop trying to read it.

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doctorRetro
Even on desktop I find this style of presentation distracting. It looks cool,
I get it, but it doesn't feel conducive to story telling to break up the text
with a screen filling image every N paragraphs.

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JoeAltmaier
It does some curious things though. It makes reading online an interactive
thing - you have to 'flip pages' quite deliberately and quite often. That
would have a significant effect on engagement I would think. Perhaps (older?)
folks like us are put off; but I can imagine a crowd that would be _more_
likely to finish the article, once they got going/hooked?

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doctorRetro
I don't feel like it makes reading interactive, so much as it makes reading
laborious. Regardless of the quality, context, or merit of the picture, it's
still a large, obtrusive break in the narrative. Paragraph, paragraph,
paragraph, and then a couple of long drags on the mouse wheel until the
structure resumes. If anything, this actually keeps me from getting hooked as
my concentration and attention are being interrupted every couple of minutes.
And I don't think this is related to my ripe old age of 34, either. I
appreciate what this style of presentation is trying to do; look like a
magazine. But reading in a browser is a much more linear experience than a
magazine, where text is often in columns that split and resume on the same
page; that's a design pattern we have had a century (or more?) to get used to.
Further, in a magazine, we usually have the option to ignore the pictures at
our leisure, which is simply not an option here. It looks cool, I'll grant
that, but it's otherwise a distraction.

