Joanna, Anne Frank. Let me tell you why. I have always had a vast interest in the events of the Holocaust. I have probably read every autobiography, memoir, diary, etc., written during or about that time. I find it fascinating how people hid from their enemies, made secret rooms, lived underground in tight bunkers for months and years. How such people survived is amazing. Their courage was profound. I read of the horrors of capture and imprisonment in the worst of human conditions. Of the tenacity to fight to live. Anne Frank was quite young at the time of her diary entries. I love to read her excerpts. I love how she was brutally honest about how she was feeling. She wore raw emotion on her sleeve. She endured so much for someone so young, but she had courage and perseverance beyond her years. When she had an especially bad day,(but weren't they all bad?) she wrote about how bad she was feeling and she made no apologies. Yet she always peppered her remarks with hope and compassion ~ even believing that the hearts of her enemies were basically good. She saw beauty in ugliness, hope in hopelessness. She endured a severe trauma, but did not collapse. She was true to herself. I could learn a lot from Anne Frank. I could learn courage, I could learn forgiveness of myself and others, I could learn that bad things happen, but life continues, and that it is important to listen to your inner voice in this journey. That we can't forget bad things happened, but we can move beyond them and learn to be better people because of them. That feeling sorry for ourselves does not improve the situation. I think I will make a book of her most famous diary entries and read through them when I am feeling especially down. Tracy