Parenthood isn't just about having biological children, but it also involves fulfilling the responsibility of nurturing and educating a child. Ever since he was a teenager, Jimmy Amisial volunteered at orphanages, often gifting bracelets made from Doritos bags to kids and raising money to support them. But in December 2017, an unexpected incident transformed the life of the Haitian student and taught him the true meaning of fatherhood.
Amisial was on a break from Texas State University where he studied communication and electronic media, and was staying at his home in Haiti when he spotted a commotion on his way to a New Year's Eve party. The crowd was staring at a four-month-old baby covered in fire ants and trash in a dustbin. Agitated at the dispassion of the crowd, then 22-year-old Jimmy, stepped forward, scooped the baby out of the trash, and took him home, CNN reported. “When I woke up that day I was unaware my life was going to change forever,” Jimmy told the news outlet. Jimmy was enraged since people weren't ready to touch the child based on local superstitions about evil spirits. “He had no clothes on. He had fire ants crawling all over him because he’d been there for a couple of hours. When I picked him up he immediately stopped crying,” he recalled.
Back at his house, Jimmy's mother, Elicie Jean, was shocked to realize that he had returned with a wounded baby, but the mother-son duo washed and clothed the baby before feeding him milk, According to Good News Network. Jimmy also got in touch with the police who couldn't find the baby’s parents despite investigating. The following day, a judge came to their house and asked Jimmy if he wanted to become the child's guardian. “After he asked me that question, I had a lot of sleepless nights. I tossed and turned but my mother reminded me things happen for a reason,” Jimmy told CNN. “I’ve always wanted to be a part of something great and to me, that was the moment.”
Representative Image Source: Side view of smiling son writing while studying by father over table at home (Getty Images)
It had always been a challenge for his family to make ends meet and on top of it, Jimmy had to pay his university fees. Nevertheless, Jimmy took a leap of faith and returned to Texas leaving the baby in the care of his mother, while he arranged financial support to raise the child.
By 2019, he was so attached to the little boy that he decided to officially adopt him. “I’m glad I got the opportunity to transform his life from being abandoned in the trash to being a wonderful treasure,” he told Good News Network. “I truly do feel like a father, and I’m excited to put pen to paper and make Emilio my son. I just need to raise the money first.” He named the baby “Emilio Angel Jeremiah,” and set out to complete the legal formalities, which wasn’t an easy process.
In 2022, Jimmy’s lawyer, Esther Chery, told CNN, that the adoption process is usually very expensive. According to an estimate, it costs more than $40,000 to adopt a child from Haiti which excludes things like airfare and lodging. So, in 2020, Jimmy put his studies on hold and started working as a part-time landscaper and delivery assistant to raise funds for the adoption. According to CNN, he also set up a GoFundMe page that year to raise funds for Emilio’s adoption and was able to raise much more than his initial target of $60,000. He said that he’ll use the extra money to support Emilio’s education and to support other children in orphanages.
Jimmy also told NBC News that his dream is to host his own television show someday. He also became the founder of @4thelovefoundation, a community that takes care of needy children, orphans, and kids who have been abandoned by their families, by providing them food, medical care, shelter, and love.
In September 2023, Jimmy celebrated Emilio's sixth birthday, and Inspired by his life-changing experience, he told CNN, “I want him to be happy. I want to teach him how to love and I want him to know that even though he was left alone, he’s not alone.”
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.