My sister Briah

How Briah Changed My Life

It has been difficult for me to see life from a good point of view when I believed that only bad things happened to me.  My sister Briah has been a great help to me because she show me so many reasons I can be happy.  Briah is eleven years old and is a girl with special needs.  She was born four months premature and she has had a lot of medical problems since then.  Even though she has a lot of disabilities, she does not let them stop her from being happy, smiling and always with desires to keep living.  At the beginning it was hard to be with someone with special needs because I did not know how to act around her.  Because of Briah I now know that people with disabilities exist to teach us many beautiful things.  That is what has happened to me with my sister Briah.  She has been a great example for me.  She has taught me how to be strong in difficult moments, to accept people who are different than me, and to see things with a good attitude and to live my life with happiness.

 The first thing that I have learned from Briah is to be strong when life is difficult. I have had three surgeries in nine years and they have been difficult. I have not been very strong because I think of Briah who is only eleven and has already has 41 surgeries and it seems incredible to me how strong she is. I have had the opportunity to be with Briah in two of her surgeries.  It has impressed me how strong she is and how easy she recovers.  Even though she is always in pain, she is always happy.On one occasion, the day after one of her surgeries I asked her how she felt and her response was “I am happy”.  It amazes how strong she is.I have learned to be strong and to not complain.

The second thing that I have learned from Briah is to accept people that are different than me. There is a big diversity of people in my family.Briah is different from everybody else in my house.She cannot walk or do other basic things for herself. Living with people with disabilities is challenging but rewarding, because I can learn a lot of things with them.Living with Briah has helped me accept people different than me. It has helped me to understand nobody is perfect.And the most important thing i have learned is to respect and not discriminate other people.

The last thing that Briah has taught me is to be happy.  Happiness is an important feeling we should have every day. It is easy to forget about what makes us happy. Briah is a girl that always is happy and it makes me happy too.  She shows me that I do not have to have an easy life to be happy. When I see the happiness that she shows, I feel happy too.Briah has shown me so many things that i can be happy and thankful for. One of those things is that I have to accept myself as I am without worrying about how I look or how smart I am.

Everything that Briah has taught me are important principles that we have to learn in life and it is not easy to learned them and shows them. I show Briah how thankful and happy I am that she is my sister and part of my life by caring for her, spending time with her and trying to be more happy in my life, even though she does not know everything I have learned thanks to her.