The Kindness Cure

Courage Rising

February 1, 2019 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

For the past two weeks I have been commuting to a new job.

Warming up the car in sub zero weather.
Hat, gloves, earbuds, lunch bag, and snacks.
A lanyard with an ID and building pass.
A highway drive to a parking lot, two trains, and a short walk.

All told: It’s about 2 1/2 to 3 hours per day, four days a week, enmeshed with humanity. This is a big change for me. I am reminded of sending my youngest daughter off for her first day of kindergarten and she didn’t want me to take a photo. I was excited for her. She was scared.

One of my intentional words for this year is courage. Researcher and storyteller, Brené Brown reminds us that the root word of courage, cour, means “heart.” Writer and social activist, Glennon Doyle, reminds us the courage also contains the word “rage,” where heartbreak can be turned into action. Both teach that vulnerability is a key to connection and transformation — and is necessary in order to be brave when facing the small and big moments in life.

The silver lining in the new commute is that I now have time to listen to podcasts. I find myself laughing aloud or shedding a tear. I use this as my time for meditation and education. In a recent interview about courage with Glennon Doyle and her partner, Abby Wamback (On Being with Krista Tippett), Doyle shared the following:

We say all the time with our kids, everything’s a pattern. It’s first the pain; then, the waiting; then, the rising — over and over and over again. Pain, waiting, rising. And when we skip the pain, we just never get to this rising.
Glennon Doyle

I loved this phrasing. Pain, waiting, rising. It reminded me of Fred Rogers as I was picturing my daughter with her little backpack all those years ago; and me now carrying my backpack and embarking on a new, uncertain journey. How we must we rise to the occasion in spite of fear. It has to do with the word “encourage,” which means to inspire with courage, spirit, or hope; to hearten. Mr. Rogers said,

As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has — or ever will have — something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.
in The World According to Fred Rogers

That’s how I feel about my work when counseling and coaching others. We are all sparks of the divine, and sometimes we need to shine our light on other’s hidden gifts with our presence, patience, empathy, and encouragement. Can we do this for ourselves, too?

Handprints in the Heart: A Reflection on Love and Loss

April 30, 2018 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

It’s been a raw, rainy and cold spring in New England. An impatience for summer has taken hold as I feel vitamin D deprived. If anything, the slog of the last few months has been a time for quiet reflection.

I went on my first 7-day retreat of “noble silence” at the Insight Meditation Society in March. A week of nothing to do but meditate with 100 women, all strangers to me. No friends. No talking. No technology. No reading. No writing. No obligations.

My family and friends at home wondered: Was it amazing? That must have been so relaxing! How nice to get away for a whole week. As if I was napping and reading fashion magazines at a spa.

Not even close. It was a week of sitting in silence, walking in silence, sitting in silence, walking in silence, sitting in silence, walking in silence… in a snowbound building and in the most rural part of the state. It was so bleak that the warm glow of a sunset, like a cherry swirl popsicle, was a gift I didn’t know I desired until it appeared. A deep appreciation settled in.

But by the end of the week a sort of transformation took place—in part because of the contrast with what came after. The minute I left I was hit with a reality of life: the hustle and bustle, the noise, the demands for my attention, a work crisis. Perhaps most poignant were the looming changes ahead: My youngest was about to turn 18 and be off to a college far away. We had also decided to move out of our home after two decades. The proverbial emptying of the nest.

If anything, the week of silence helped me to be present with all the uncertainty, to be patient with discomfort, and to practice the deep work of befriending my own mind. This is not easy.

One evening at the retreat the master teacher, Christina Feldman, read one of my favorite poems, Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

Hearing the poem in the midst of such quietude was a comfort, like the tender hand of a grandmother resting on my shoulder. The young woman next to me began to weep and I wished I could have taken her hand in mine. We were alone, together. And yet the proximity, the felt sense of compassion, was enough for each of us to bear our own thoughts.

The opening lines of the poem linger with me as I clear out closets, discover remnants of child’s play, and make the donation rounds to Savers. Mostly achingly the words sear as I apply and reapply fresh coats of paint to the stair banisters, oily and stained by children’s hands. Covering up the proof of our lives.

The other day my college-bound child flounced on the couch in my home office. She looked up at the ceiling and noticed a dirty hand print. That’s yours, I told her. “No way.” Yes. You tried on a new white dress for a banquet and twirled on the coffee table feeling so pretty and proud. She didn’t believe that she could have reached that high as a kid. She hopped up and realized that indeed her 11-year old agile self might very well have done just that. One of her nicknames was Jumping Josie after all. We stared at the smudge for a long while.

…all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

We both knew. Same time next year all this would be but a memory. Childhood is like that. It has a shape, many shapes, and then it’s gone. Even the dirty hand print.

Still. I’m not painting over it.

Not as long as I live here anyway.

P.S. Hop on over my book page to sign-up for Kindness Cure goodies.

Notes:

You can listen to the poet Naomi Shihab Nye read her poem Kindness at On Being radio.

Photo credits:

Stairs, Jumping Josie, Hand Print (c) Tara Cousineau, 2018

Sunset

Aaron Andary

Picture Your Loving Self

January 15, 2018 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

The little girl in the framed photo is holding a Siberian husky pup almost too heavy for her little body. She has dark banana curls and is missing her two front teeth. The teeth were lost after a face plant on a marble coffee table a year earlier. Like a gymnast on the parallel bars, she had been swinging her body forward and back like a pendulum, her little hands grasping the carved mahogany arms of a couch and chair placed kitty corner to each other. She had been warned not to do that, of course.

The old photo rests on a small cabinet in my home office in a lovely frame set against the backdrop of a wall painted with a lavender hew called Misty Memories. My eyes scan this photo every day, along with a few photos of my daughters at various ages and other reminders of the vulnerabilities and joys in life. I’ve included my small self in my morning ‘centering practice’ for so long that I’ve virtually forgotten the original intent for placing her in my view: Self-compassion.

What are some things you do to take care of yourself when the world seems to be falling to bits and pieces?

That’s a question I was asked recently by two amazing moms, Leslie and Tesi, founders of the Mama Bear Dares podcast. As I thought about my own life, the most tangible answer I could offer was having this little picture in my view every day. When I look at it I give an internal bow to that child who was so full of light and love and who overcame so much. It’s also turned into an acknowledgement of gratitude. It’s as if the now-me and my smaller me can wink at each other, our mutual gaze strung by delicate threads of resilience across the decades. And I always smile.

But the kicker is this: I don’t mention this practice in my book. This blind spot took me by total surprise. I have suggested this ritual to women who seek my counsel countless times. I even suggest they find photos of themselves at various ages 3, 12, 25 and so on. For some women, this is difficult because of all the pain, shame, or regret their past can trigger. But that’s precisely the point. Loving ourselves can be very hard to do. In fact, there is so much resistance to this idea that I put my own photo out many years ago. I wanted these women to see that I do this, too.

When I shared this idea Leslie and Teri teared up. It captured their attention. Their original question was about coping with the plight of humanity but we ended up talking about self-care. It can be challenging to care for others or to find one’s bearings when the latest calamity hits your life or ambushes the airwaves. We can fall under what I call a SPEL: Self-Protective Empathy Lethargy. The overwhelm can shut us down and make us want to crawl under the bed. That’s where I used to hide as a kid. This is a natural and human response to threat or fear. As a way through we need to find ways to calm the fear. “Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves,” says the meditation teacher, Pema Chödrön. Many wise people insist that in order to love and care for others, we must first love and care for ourselves.

Love Includes Everyone, So Count Yourself In

Love me first? It’s a true paradox. Self-kindness doesn’t just spring out of nowhere—it arises from being physically held by another person from the moment you were born. Envision the quintessential image of a mother with babe in arms, perhaps a memory of holding your own infant. Physiologically, a bonding process is unfolding within that image—eye gazing, rhythmic breathing, beating hearts, cooing sounds—sealing the human connection. Or imagine a beloved pet like the puppy in my photo. For me that photo is a double shot of mojo. I’m sure I didn’t even realize it when I chose to frame it for my little office altar so many years ago—before I even had a clue about the powerful emotional and physiological effects of self-compassion practice.

Such tenderness is inherently relational and has been part of our neurobiology from the start of life. But we don’t always have loving caretakers around when we need them. Sometimes we need to imagine ourselves enveloped with tenderness. Indeed, self-compassion has strong physiological elements. You can give yourself an inner hug, or embrace yourself with folded arms, or place a gentle hand over the heart. This is how you can ignite your body’s natural ability to soothe. That’s why having a photo of your smaller self can be so healing and nurturing. To seal in this self-care you can add in a personal affirmation that is authentic and true to your experience in the moment. It can be as simple as “I am strong.” “I am loveable.” “I’ve got this.” For the skeptic, you might try: “Even if this feels weird, I will be kind to myself.” Sometimes using self-talk in the third person can be helpful: “You sure were cute, kiddo.” “You are worthy of love.” “You can count on me.” The practice is meant to ignite uplifting feelings of love, tenderness, trust, protection, and well-being in relation to yourself.

When it comes to helping others just start close to home: the home of your own heart. The more you practice kindness for yourself, the more resilient—and compassionate—you become for others.

You can listen to Mama Bear Dares podcast here (Episode #146) as well as many other great conversations with women.

Learn more about my book, The Kindness Cure: How the Science of Compassion Can Heal Your Heart and Your World.

For any one who pre-orders a book you can also get some extra goodies, like meditations downloads and affirmation images for your devices — after all we do need reminders!

Let’s Make Everyday Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2017 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

We could all use a little more kindness in the world.

The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote:

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

Being kind is top of mind these days. I like to think of kindness as a daily practice. Some of the definitions of practice include “a habitual or customary performance” and a “condition arrived at by experience or exercise.” Kindness is not something that we just have or don’t have. Kindness is a value that requires intention and effort, and a joyful effort at that. Yet, it can be challenging to exercise kindness when we feel stressed or challenged by life.

The awesome news from neuroscience, however, is that doing kind things is a happiness boost, triggering the reward centers in our brain. That also means that practice really matters as it encourages positive neuroplasticity – real changes in the brain based on experience. So every little kind act builds up the kindness pathways. Really, what’s not to love about being kind when it really comes from the heart?

But let’s admit it. Sometimes we need a little encouragement to step outside of ourselves and our comfort zones. It may be doing something kind for another person, and sometimes it can be doing something kind for yourself. Sometime it’s a shift in attitude and being tender toward the people in your life.

So every year, when Valentine’s Day rolls around, it’s refreshing to remember that love and kindness is not limited to romantic notions. We all need daily doses of love and kindness. Luckily there is no shortage of ways to do this.

How kind do you think you are? Take my Kindness Quotient Quiz to find out!

This year in particular, kindness consciousness raising is on the rise and is the mission of some of my favorite organizations. Here is what they are up to this week.

The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation

Become a RAKavist this Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) Week, February 12-18. RAK has a cool “kindness generator” that helps you track kindness. As the RAK team describes it: “The kindness generator is a tool that helps us in our goal to turn the world kind. Anyone can visit and find a kind act to do, or see acts being done by others. We keep a running total of who the kindest businesses, cities and people are across the globe.” You can register here.

Share your random act of kindness on social media using #RAKWeek2017.

Kindness.org

The new online platform crowdsources personal acts of kindness. You can join a specific kindness initiative, like creating a healthier planet, or create one for yourself, like developing positive habits. Their KindLab, where kindness meets science, is looking at how kindness creates happiness. You can contribute to the research as a participant and also check out their study about kindness.

City of Kindness

Stefani Germanotta, also known as Lady Gaga, has a kindness initiative through her Born This Way Foundation, Her mission is to build a kinder, braver world. In 2016, the foundation joined philanthropist Phil Anschutz of The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, to challenge America’s cities to be kind. Learn about creating Cities of Kindness here.

It’s never too late to tell your mayor you’re ready to make every city a kinder, braver place!

You can also take the Kindness Pledge and promote kindness in schools with Positive Schools Climate programs.

Connect with fellow kindness enthusiasts on social media using #kindmonsters and #hackharrassment

Compassion It

For the politically-minded or social justice peeps, CompassionIt.com has a cool initiative to send compassion wrist bands to your senator. Let’s keep kindness top of mind for our top officials. Compassion It’s mission is to inspire compassionate actions and attitudes. “We envision a day when compassion is practiced by every person, for every person, on every day.”

Spread the Compassion It message on social media using #CompassionIt and #CompassionItSenate

Kind World

Finally, if you need inspiration about humanity, check out the Kind World podcast by WBUR. Listen to the amazingly produced 7-minute stories about the profound ways one kind act can change lives. Listen to one story per week and see how it might change the way you look at life. I share these stories once a week on #CompassionateMondays on social media so check them out! They are inspirational.

Connect with other listeners on social media using #kindworld.

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The history of Valentine’s Day is a bit mysterious but one legend claims that St. Valentine was a priest in 3rd century Rome. His kind acts of marrying young men defied Emperor Claudius II, which at the time was outlawed because he believed single men made better soldiers. He was martyred for his kindness…There are other legends behind St. Valentine and how St. Valentine’s Day became what it is today. In case you’re curious, check out how this holiday evolved on the History Channel to what it is today. http://bit.ly/MNbOmJ

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Remember, kindness is contagious! Make a small kind act your valentine today and everyday.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

A version of this post was originally published at www.bodimojo.com

How to Be a Kindness Magnet

October 4, 2016 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

Recently featured on The Huffington Post on September 29th, 2016:

Sometimes it takes a child to teach us about our natural instinct for kindness. Something we could all use a little more of these days.

One late summer morning I was making a cup of tea in the kitchen. Thinking I was the first one up I was surprised when I spotted my daughter, about 12 years old, sitting stock-still by the bird feeder like a garden gnome. Oddly, she was wearing winter boots. They were sprinkled with birdseed. Sure enough, a chipmunk scurried over her toes and a bird paused momentarily on her knee. She remained stationary. This lasted a good 15 minutes, which is a long time for a kid who can’t sit still.

“What was that about?” I inquired when she came in.

“I was waiting for Charles” she said.

Charles?

“The woodchuck.”

I often reflect on my daughter’s focus that morning in her attempt to befriend the garden creatures. It was if she was experimenting with a combination of being mindful, curious, and kind. Short of being a Snow White, she was like a kindness magnet. Ever since then I have held the image of the garden as a metaphor for growing a kind mind.

(C) Steve Cousineau

It’s not a new way of approaching the mind, of course. Sages, poets, mystics, and scientists have been drawn to the natural elements to render our subjective life, too. It’s apt. We all have a natural capacity to cultivate empathy, love, generosity, kindness, and joy. In fact, we are wired with a caring circuitry from our head down to our toes.

Kind by Nature.

Discoveries from a broad range of disciplines including neurobiology, evolutionary sciences, psychology, and education have now shown that not only are we wired for kindness and compassion, but that we can foster this natural circuitry with our mere desire and attentiveness to do so, just as we can cultivate a garden to grow through attention and care. I call it kindfulness. And in today’s world, ripe with blatant negativity and meanness in the public discourse as new kind of normal, fortifying our compassionate hearts really matters.

Dacher Keltner, a social psychologist and director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, has devoted his career to bringing attention to our kinder nature. In his book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, Keltner highlights a lesser-known aspect of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, namely, that sympathy is our reflexive social instinct, and it is stronger than self-interest or self-protection. This compassion instinct developed out of the necessity for the constant caring of human babies, who require years of nurturing before they are launched into the world. Keltner writes:

Our babies are the most vulnerable offspring on the face of the Earth. And that simple fact changed everything. It rearranged our social structures, building cooperative networks of caretaking, and it rearranged our nervous systems. We became the super caregiving species, to the point where acts of care improve our physical health and lengthen our lives. We are born to be good to each other (Keltner, 2012).”

But while kindness, sympathy, and compassion are a natural part of our evolution, the new neuroscience of neuroplasticity teaches us that every experience we have results in bursts of neural activity that fire in different parts of the brain, strengthening various connections.

Any positive or negative mental activity – sensations, thoughts, and feelings – that you habitually focus on eventually shapes the inner landscape of your brain.

That means as you engage in your day-to-day life and expose yourself to new learnings and ideas, neurons will fire and new connections will grow; conversely, neurons related to the things you no longer pay attention to will be weeded out and recede. While it is also true that paying attention to negative impulses, such as the emotions arising from stressful situations – anger, irritation, or numbing – can similarly strengthen neural pathways you may not want to empower, it’s helpful to know what we can control where our attention goes and focus more on the positive behaviors that lead to calm and happy states, healthy bodies, happy relationships, meaningful work, and caring communities.

So how does kindfulness apply to everyday life?

Cultivating kindfulness is a continual practice for everyone, even for the most well-adjusted and happy person you can think of!

If you want a kind mind and a kind life, don’t wait for the world to change, start with your own actions.

Here are a couple ways you can start:

1. Surround yourself with kindness.

This could mean establishing safety and support in your living environment, talking to a trusted friend or family member, setting personal boundaries, practicing mindfulness and meditation and other self-care activities, finding community, or doing things that inspire you. Tending to yourself in the company of other compassionate people amplifies the caring circuity.

2. Be kind on purpose.

Do something intentionally kind every day. The more kindness you exude towards the outside world, the more you’ll cultivate in your own heart and mind, and the more will come back to you in return. This could mean volunteering, calling someone out of the blue to say hello, smiling at strangers, spending time with pets, donating to charity, or even picking up a piece of trash that isn’t yours. After all, kindness is contagious.

3. Let kindness sink in.

Sometimes we take for granted our own generosity or that of others. Take a moment to acknowledge the tender, thoughtful, and kind moments and let them imprint in your brain. If you make it a habit of asking yourself every day “How did kindness show up for me today?” then you’re more likely to see positivity, health, and happiness thrive.

The heartening news is that the mechanism of positive neuroplasticity and our innate wiring for sympathy and caregiving provide all the necessary ingredients for living a happy life. It is up to us to transform these raw materials into moment-by-moment kindfulness. Over time, that process will become second nature, and life itself will flow with greater ease. Wait and see: One day you’ll wake up and be a kindness magnet.

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Would love to hear from you. Please leave your comments on my HuffPost article HERE!

Empathy: Harry Potter’s Playbook

August 23, 2016 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

potter-clipart-d5aade2db1cfd7207f01c02ab9d871f6 I don’t know about you but I love the back to school vibe. Of course, I have a high schooler who would be happy to prolong the summer as long as possible. If she could “apperate” she would. I remind her that if Harry Potter could survive a teacher like Dolorus Umbridge, so could she.

My first child is now off to college and I can’t help to reflect that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released the year she was born in 1997. (And now an 8th installment is here.) None none of us could have predicted what a big role the HP series would play in our family life. The Harry Potter series served as an essential survival guide for middle school and beyond.

Let’s take, for example, a few quotes to live by:

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.

We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.

It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.

I’m glad my newly minted college student took her ragged Harry Potter paperbacks with her. (“It’s my relaxation, Mom.”) That she can carry the lessons from Hogwart’s with her into unknown territory will serve her well, no doubt.

J.K. Rowling is not only a brilliant storyteller, she also is a master teacher of empathy. That’s what I love best. In 2008 J.K. Rowling gave a remarkable commencement speech at Harvard University entitled, Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination. As the race for achievement and success takes priority over kindness, empathy and fairness among today’s parents and youth, this gem of a speech should be required reading for all. (You can view the speech here and get the little gift book). Before Rowling even wrote the first lines of Harry Potter, she worked at Amnesty International and heard the crushing testimonies of torture victims. The invention of Death Eaters as well as Hermoine Granger’s Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare has new meaning after hearing her story. Yet, the author’s message is both timeless and urgent. We each have the capability to choose empathy simply by virtue of our imagination.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation; in its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

So as the kids stream back into the hallways of school and vie for their place in the social pecking order, it’s as good time as any to have the “empathy talk.”

Conversation starters:

What does kindness mean to you?
What’s a good example of you being kind or someone being kind to you?
What’s something you can do every day to show kindness?
Do you know what the phrase means: “Put in yourself in another person shoes” or “Walk a mile in another’s shoes”? What are some example of you you can imagine being in other person place.
Do you think you have to have a similar experience as other people to understand their feelings? Do you think you can imagine someone else’s life even if you don’t have the same?
What are some kind actions you can do today?
What have you noticed when people treat each other kindly?
Do you think you can treat yourself kindly when you have had a hard time? How might you do that?
What are your favorite books or stories about kindness and compassion? Why?

Check these out:

Read the Report by Making Caring Common (Harvard Graduate School of Education): The Children We Mean to Raise

Do you have a kindness story to share? Please do! I’m interveiing people for the book, The Kindness Cure

Groceries and Gratitude

July 8, 2016 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

Cereal. Pasta. Beans. Crackers. Veggies. The groceries would appear from time to time on my doorstep.

This happened one summer on Cape Cod while I worked at a series of awful, low-wage jobs with my girlfriends: waitressing, pressing t-shirt emblems at a tourist shack on Route 6, and cleaning toilets at a sketchy hotel. It was a sour economy and I barely made enough money to pay rent or finish payments for a college semester in Kenya – my anticipated great escape from a life which seemed nothing but struggle.

The groceries were a blessing.

“There goes Mr. Q again!” I quipped when my friends gave me suspicious looks. Mr. Q would leave a brief note. Sometimes, there was some cash. He never knocked or stayed to say hello. I may have met him in person all but twice.

Mr. Q had been an acquaintance of my mother’s during the glamourous early 60s in New York City. She was a stewardess among other European gals arriving to give the American Dream a go. I guessed that Mr. Q had a crush on her that eventually became a long distance admiration. He’s dead now so I can’t ask him. My beautiful mother will deny any past romantic interests, so she’s no help on this matter. I never knew about Mr. Q until my first semester at college when a check for $50 arrived with a note: “For books ~ Mr. Q”.
The groceries appeared after I graduated and worked in more low-wage jobs in Boston. This time the goods were left outside of a depressing room I rented just shy of the landing strips at Logan airport. The trend continued when I could afford a “real” apartment with a friend in the North End overlooking the old Boston expressway. Ida, an Italian grandmother perched at the second floor window, kept watch over our comings and goings – and she took in my infrequent mail, including the occasional package from Mr. Q.

I can’t imagine my daughters launching into adult life as I did or even as my German mother did crossing the Atlantic on an ocean liner all by herself. I, too, had an early job at an airport and it was hardly glamorous. My first and last assignment as a marketing assistant was digging up information about the Cape Cod canals for a transportation speech to be given by the executive director. (That meant spending days in Boston Public Library’s card catalog room.)

For whatever reason, Mr. Q seemed to think that writing might be a good career for me. Mr. Q, it turned out, happened to be the owner of a small newspaper in a Boston neighborhood. When he learned I was taking a trip up to Montreal for a reason I can no longer remember, he called and suggested I write a travel story for the paper. I felt obligated. After all Mr. Q was a benefactor of sorts and I did not want to disappoint him. I scrabbled something together on the bus ride home and typed it up at work. I had assumed an editor would do some magic.

But no.

An endlessly long and uninteresting article appeared. I only knew this because Mr. Q clipped it and sent it in the mail. Looking back, I’m thankful the Internet didn’t exist. It was terribly written. But he was terribly kind.

I’m not sure why Mr. Q popped in my mind these last few days. I haven’t thought of him in ages. Then it occurred to me; I’m a writing a book. A first book. Somehow he knows this. He planted the seed that took a long time to germinate. That my book is about kindness is even more fitting. I’ve been scanning my past – a sort of “kindsight” of the lessons I was meant to learn to grow my soul. In those lonely years of starting out, I simply wanted encouragement from the people I loved the most. For whatever reason they couldn’t provide it and I don’t fault them for it. Yet, the odd Mr. Q gave a damn.

Mr. Q. Untouchable. Mysterious. Benevolent. Timely. Just like an angel.

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If you have a story about kindness, as a giver, receiver or witness of a gesture or act of generosity, love or compassion, please do share. I’m collecting contributions for The Kindness Cure.

Share a Kindness Story