Photo by: Antony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon

The worst illness of our time is that so many people have to suffer from never being loved. ~Princess Diana

Thirteen years ago.

I had an old used console television in my room, I don’t remember if I had cable; probably not. I lived in government housing in a small town in Alabama. A single mom with three kids, I had not a clue in the world what the hell I was going to do except get up every day, get kids where they need to be, go to work, pick up kids, clean, cook, try to sleep, do it all again the next day and somewhere in there try to have fun, whatever that was. I remember I didn’t sleep much back then.

Thirteen years ago, I was sitting in my bedroom; my bed was a foam mattress on the floor. It was the middle of the night and I couldn’t sleep, as normal. I turned on the television and watched the only thing being broadcast. It was horrible. All I could think was ‘why were they showing this?! What if her sons could see it?’ I cried so hard and so long; I bawled. A tragedy. A real life tragedy.

Still, today, tears come to my eyes thinking about it. I didn’t deify her or think she was anything special. I didn’t buy magazines with her picture on it. I didn’t follow her every move. I couldn’t tell you what she was doing; what good works she was involved with other than people with AIDS and ridding the world of landmines. But I knew enough and saw enough about her that I related at some level; mother/ wife/ woman.

Painfully aware of image, I always tried to portray to the world what I wanted them to see in me. I knew from a lousy marriage and the friends I had recently distanced myself from, that who you associate with is every bit as important to who others think you are as what you do or say; single mothers doubly so.

I don’t speak for all the single moms back then, but for me, even though she didn’t have the money problems I had at the time, I could relate to Princess Diana. I could look at her and feel some sort of connection, a kinship, as it were. She was in a lousy marriage, too, that she left; she had children to raise; she had to deal with image; she wanted to do good.

Even now, she is the strongest, most beautiful woman I have ever seen. And still, I feel some sort of connection with her: I, too, want to do good in the world.