| This is the 40th story of Our Life Logs | I was fortunate to be raised by the gentlest and kindest woman I’ve ever known. I was an only child of a single mother who radiated grace and strength. She was everything to me, and I was everything to her. Though it was the two of us against the world, we made a great team. I may have been an only child growing up in our New Jersey home, but our family was extended by the animals we kept. Not just a dog and a cat, but birds, bunnie