I mentioned in my “Celebrity Depression, Spiritual Lessons” gallery how Brooke Shields’ memoir, “Down Came the Rain,” gave me permission to cry all I wanted, especially in the months after I started breastfeeding Katherine, when I started to sink into a very severe depression.

This prologue is a beautiful explanation of how life unfolds often times a little differently than we expect, or would like. Nonetheless, we hope to be stronger, more compassionate people for it. As reader Elemgee, who I wrote about above, said “We are so much healthier, more compassionate people for all we went through.” That certainly seems to be the case among the more compassionate people in my life–more often than not, they didn’t get there via the Happy Highway.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who dreamed of being a mommy. She wanted, more than anything, to have a child and knew her dream would come true one day. She would sit for hours thinking up names to call her baby.

Eventually this little girl grew up. Though she’d met and married her Prince Charming, she was having trouble conceiving. She began to realize that her dream wasn’t going to come true without a great deal of medical help.

So she went on a long journey through the world of fertility treatments. When none of them worked, she got frustrated and depressed. She felt like a failure.

And then one day, finally, she became pregnant. She was thrilled beyond belief. She had a wonderful pregnancy and a perfect baby girl. At long last, her dream of being a mommy had come true. But instead of being relieved and happy, all she could do was cry.