What follows is a middle school essay that Andrea's mother found among her things: "My life is nothing but a gift. I too raise my song of praise."
When life welcomes us, we are like tender saplings, spotless young beings, and we live in a world of new images that will later become so familiar.
Life, this magnificent gift that only now am I beginning to understand, is like a blend of herbs; it smells of gentle aromas, but what will its taste be? Sweet or bitter? I can say sweet, and I thank God for everything He has given me, especially for my sister.
Poor child! She taught me the value of love. She opened to me a world—hers, the world of the "excluded"—which otherwise I would never have entered, which I would have only skimmed without understanding what lay beneath, without seeing what truly happens there.
I thank Him for the early rejections from my friends: they did not want me with them, and this rejection of my own helped me accept others without hurting them the way I had been hurt. It taught me the struggle a young person faces when trying to fit in, and how to help him through it.
I thank Him for my parents' love, which guided me to understand the value of life and so many other things essential to building a solid foundation for my future.
I thank Him for giving me a normal intelligence, and for everything He has given me, from my birth until today.
I thank Him because in prayer I find a life's purpose, and I feel within me that selfishness, indifference, and cruelty dissolve like snow in the sun. I find the strength to go on, even in moments when everything seems to collapse around me, when I understand that an idea I believed in blindly was wrong. And I thank Him even for what lies ahead, because I know it will not be ugly.
Andrea Varoli, 1980