You Don’t Have to Adopt to Make an Impact

Adopting an animal is a serious commitment. For those who aren’t able to adopt, but still want to make a difference in the life of an abandoned animal, fostering is an excellent alternative.

There are many foster programs that give at-and-dog-lovers the chance to provide interim housing for displaced pets who have yet to find their forever home. Many of these foster programs cover food and medical expenses, meaning all you have to worry about is giving your furry guest a safe and loving place to stay. And who knows? You might just fall in love.

National Day of Listening

Be an active listener. When someone else is speaking, it is easy to become distracted by thoughts and external sounds, such as a car horn or other nearby conversations-and by giving in to these distractions you can miss crucial details from the speaker. Let the person who is talking know that you are listening by making eye contact and focusing on the sound of their voice rather than the distractions around you. Additionally, don’t interrupt someone when they are speaking. Listen, then respond. Quite often, people are not looking to be “fixed”-they truly just want to be heard.

Make Someone Happy!

As the old Jimmy Durante song goes, “make someone happy.” A thoughtful, hand-written letter will do that every time! If you make just one someone happy, you will be happy too.

A Major Gender Justice Superhero

https://tgijp.org/

Staffed entirely by transgender folks, the TGI Justice Project (tgip.org) has been dedicated to supporting transgender people both inside and outside of prison since 2003 Devoted to forging “a culture of resistance and resilience to strengthen us for the fight against imprisonment, police violence, racism, poverty, and societal pressures,” TGIP answers prison letters from transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex prisoners. It also provides resources, funding, and support to low-income transgender women of color who are in prison, formaly incarcerated, or targeted by the police, and their families.

Helmed by Executive Director Miss major, the legendary transgender rights advocate who has been an activist since before the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the TGI Justice Project describes itself as seeking to “create a world rooted in self-determination, freedom of expression, and gender justice.” 

Knitting the World Back Together with a Lot of Love

Volunteer was never a word in her vocabulary. Not that Lee Grant didn’t know what it meant, but it wasn’t something she would ever think about doing. Feeling unloved as a child left her self-centered, angry, and needy. As far as Lee was concerned, the world owed her. But it was hard to get to know the world, as small as hers was.  Sheltered and sequestered in a small coastal community in rural New England, she knew little about the daily lives of regular people with regular families, but enough to know that hers wasn’t like theirs. “Bad things happened in my house,” she said, “and I never understood why, because I was afraid to ask.”

Throughout her teen and young adult years, Lee used drugs and alcohol to transport herself, begging attention from anyone and everyone. Chemicals seemed to work in the short haul, but eventually they led to more destructive behaviors: setting fires, shoplifting, drunk driving, punching through plate glass windows. Cutting helped drain her pent up self-loathing and relieved her. Sutures and butterfly bandages briefly put her back together, but after so many years and so many scars, self-mutilation wasn’t working. After three weeks in an institution for attempted suicide, she was ready to try something differnt.

One day, out of the blue, Lee was invited into a knit shop filled with happy, loving people and found a passion and joy she never knew before. “I made things with my hands and felt good about myself. I entered an afghan in the county fair and won a blue ribbon. I joined AA and stopped drinking. I found a community of creative people who accepted me and my knitting and that, along with sober living, brought the attention I craved. But still...something was missing,”she said. She noticed she felt best when she shared her knowledge of knitting and making other people happy brought a new kind of satisfaction.

On a whim, Lee volunteered to teach knitting classes to kids for the local Santa Rosa chapter of Catholic Charities (CatholicCharities.org). She wanted to find out if knitting would make a difference to them like it did for her. She wanted to give them something they could turn to when life got too scary, or complicated, or boring...something they could turn to for comfort or fun. She gave them sticks and string and direction. She gave them an opportunity to feel accomplished and proud. She gave them a piece of herself and found out what she’d been missing.

Lee began to care about other people. “I taught families at a homeless shelter to knit. I taught a group of foster teens. I crocheted for battered women and premature babies. I knitted warm hats for cold-headed cancer patients I would never get to know.

“All of this giving changes me. I feel good inside. No longer hollow and self-centered, I feel something akin to love. For others. For myself. For who I am. For what I do.” Lee is not just any knitter; she is tremendously gifted and tremendously generous. She is the author of several books, including Love in Every Stitch, and is a sought-after pattern designer. Go to her Facebook page, “Knitting and Healing With Lee Grant,” or you can find her at a shelter with a lot of bright, beautiful skeins of yarn and a bunch of happy kids, doing what she does best.

I asked Lee to sum up how it was that she came to “be a good in the world.”

“I blame it on volunteering,” she said.

It Takes a Village and You

In early 2010, in the small village of Nshupu, Tanzania, nine malnourished orphans were sleeping on a cement floor without even a blanket or sufficient food. Four years later, these children have a lovely new permanent home, are attending school, and have welcomed six more orphans to their family. Their home also serves as a village community center that hosts, among other things, a weekly women’s empowerment group that has created a savings and loan program for impoverished single mothers and widows. There is also a kindergarten program that serves 70 village children annually, including feeding them regular meals. All these endeavors are shepherded by PreciousProject.org, which explains on their website, “Though lack of education is a leading cause of poverty, Tanzanian schools are not free. Attendance even at the primary school level requires the ability to pay for school uniforms, meals, materials, equipment, fees, and other expenses. As a result, there are children who are unable to even receive a primary education. Our goal is to help break the cycle of poverty by providing educational opportunities for orphans and other high-risk children.”

Universal Children’s Day

Today we should all make a greater effort to support the welfare of the children of the world. Participate in a charity, organization, or activity that promotes the welfare of children such as Save The Children, UNICEF, Global Movement for Children, Childreach International, Children’s Defense Fund, and any others you may find.

“We were all children once. And we all share the desire for the well-being of our children, which has always been and will continue to be the most universally cherished aspiration of humankind.”

-We The Children, At The World Summit For children Report Of The Secretary- General

How to Have an Attitude of Gratitude

1. Be grateful and recognise the things others have done to help you.

2. When you say, “Thank you,” to someone, it signals what you appreciate and why you appreciate it.

3. Post a “Thank you to all” on your Facebook page on your blog, or send individual emails to friends, family, or colleagues.

4. Send a handwritten thank-you note. These are noteworthy because so few of us take time to write and mail them.

5. Think thoughts of gratitude-two or three good things that happened today-and notice calm settle through your head, at least for a moment. It activates a part of the brain that floods the body with endorphins, or feel-good hormones.

6. Remember the ways your life has been made easier or better because of others’ efforts. Be aware of and acknowledge the good things, large and small, going on around you.

7. Keep a gratitude journal to list the people or things you’re grateful for today. The list may start out short, but it will grow as you notice more of the good things around you.

8. Being grateful shakes you out of self-absorption and helps you recognize those who’ve done wonderful things for you. Expressing that gratitude continues to draw those people into your sphere.

9. Remember this thought from Maya Angelou: “When you learn, teach; when you get, give.”

10. Join forces to do good. If you have survived illness or loss, you may want to reach out to others to help as a way of showing gratitude for those who reached out to you.

Muchas Gracias

I learned from my globetrotting friend Santosh that one of the nicest things a traveler can do is to learn how to say the basics in the language of the locals. He stressed that saying “thank you” is the most important phrase of all. His guide to global gratitude is below:

Arabic: Shukran

Czech: Dekuji

Danish: Tak

Dutch: Dank u

Estonian:Tanan teid

Filipino: Salamat

Finnish: Kiitos

French: Merci

German: Danke

Hungarian: Koszonom

Indonesian: Terima kasih

Irish: Go raibh maith agat

Italian: Grazie

Japanese: Arigato

Latvian: Paldies

Norwegian: Takk

Polish: Dziekuje

Portuguese: Obrigado

Romanian: Multumesc

Spanish: Gracias

Swahili: Asante

Swedish: Tack

Vietnamese: Cam o’n ban

Welsh: Diolch yn fawr 

America Recycles Day

According to 50 Ways to Help the Planet (50waystohelp.com), “Recycled glass reduces related air pollution by 20% and related water pollution by 50%. If it isn’t recycled it can take a million years to decompose….20 recycled aluminum cans could be made with the energy it takes to manufacture one brand new one. Every ton of glass recycled saves the equivalent of nine gallons of fuel oil needed to make glass from virgin materials.

Good Karma

Holding the elevator: a simple yet kind idea. If you are inside an elevator and see someone approaching as the doors close, hold the doors open to let them in. You might make a nice connection and the person will appreciate this gesture. Rack up those karma points. 

The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few

Use Goodsearch.com to search the Internet, play games, or answer survey questions. This for- profit company donates a portion of all advertising revenue to charity (50% of revenue or one cent for each search).

Shower the People You Love with Love

After a wedding or party, donate all the flowers to a nursing home or hospital. Alternately, take them to your place of work and fill the entire office with beauty and love.

Make Time for Gratitude Every Day

When we begin a daily practice of recognizing the positive events that occur and the pleasant encounters we have with others, we will start being more thankful as the days pass. Perhaps it’s someone who holds the door for you at the supermarket, the nice conversation you have with a stranger while at the coffee shop, or a hug with someone you love. These are the small moments, and often the ones we forget. Savor their beauty and what they tell you about mankind-that we do live among many good people.

Look at Everything in a New Way

Simply reframe your perception: each of us has had dreams that for one reason or another, we do not achieve. And we may have made choices that perhaps were not the best. Yet, rather than allowing regret to overtake us, we must celebrate all the other goals we’ve accomplished and positive choices we’ve made.

Human nature so often leads us to perceive the one negative in a sea of positives. But we can retrain ourselves to learn the lessons embedded in our mistakes, and allow ourselves to feel pride in the beauty we are capable of. All it takes is a little shift. You’ll see.

Make It Count

My boyfriend is first-generation American Chinese, an “ABC”. His family was unable to vote or even own property until the Civil Rights Act was passed in the sixties. He tells his children to “make it count” and passionately follows local, national and international events and politics. Get educated about the governance of your own neighborhood in addition to the national political landscape. Exercise your right to vote. Voting is a sacred right that is one of the most important parts of our political system. Be informed about what is going on in your country, know what ideas you support and are against, and vote on each Election Day to speak for the public-you will be heard.

A Plate of Cookies Can Change a Life

You know how certain memories sometimes remain crystal clear as though they are trapped in the amber of your consciousness?. While I don’t know nearly enough about how the brain works, I suspect these shards of memory that stay with us are some of the most important events of our lives to be pondered upon for all that they contain. They might be teachable moments for us to draw upon. While the neuroscience aspects allude me, I do know this memory is a life lesson:

My besties and I like to have a cup of tea now and again, the fancy kind with tea cakes, cupcakes, and cookies that are almost too beautiful to eat. During my decade in the Lower Haight, my dear friends and I got together once a month, taking turns at each other’s houses. I was excited to be hosting one lovely spring day and planned everything to the tee-lemon bars with lime icing, mini cupcakes with icing that looked like lace, and my favorite black and white cookies, chocolate on one side, vanilla on the other. I even had brightly colored paper napkins with sassy wild women quotes on them. 

I was working in Berkeley and living in San Francisco, which meant that just getting across the Bay Bridge was going to be an adventure. On this day, it was going to be a miracle. I was terrified my friends would be standing at the front door, stamping their nicely shod feet, waiting for me as I navigated the traffic. I surrendered to it, knowing my anxiety would not change a thing. Plus, I had my secret weapon-the nicest array of confections ever. How could they be mad at me when they were being served stunningly beautiful cookies on napkins that reminded them they are fabulous?

Finally, my lane of traffic oozed off the Fremont exit into downtown San Francisco. I was going to bust one of my special moves and drive down a one-way arterial to avoid the clogged streets. To do that, I had to drive past the Transbay Terminal, one of the most desolate and derelict spots in all the greater bay Area. I was chugging along and feeling good about my bag of goodies, when I was stopped again by a Muni bus that appeared to be lumbering along at maybe three miles per hour. But I still had my special treats and my confidence remained intact. 

I looked to my left and a mother and her toddler were standing on the raised median about two feet away from my car. She looked to be not much older than a teenager herself, and had a big bruise on her cheek and a frightened look. Her little boy was hugging her knee, trying to stay warm in the arctic wind that blasts San Francisco as soon as the sun sets. I smiled at them and she smiled back, and I saw then that she was missing at least one tooth. In this moment, I just knew she had run away from an abusive home and was getting herself and her son to safety. I also knew in that moment that they needed money. I scrambled around in my messy purse but could only find a five-dollar bill, as I had spent all my cash on the sweets. I grabbed the pretty paper bag filled with boxes of delicacies and shoved it into her hands along with the wadded up bill. The look on her face was what will stay with me a lifetime. She was surprised, and the stress drained out of her face and I could see how pretty she was. The bus shot forward and I had to drive away but I managed to shout back at her, “These are the best cookies in the world, so everything is going to be okay!” I looked in the rearview mirror and saw her bend down. She opened a box and lovingly fed her little boy one of my treasured black and whites. They were laughing and her son was even dancing around. My heart lifted as I drove away. I was especially pleased that this young woman was going to be reminded about her fabulousness by sassy paper napkins. 

My girlfriends and I microwaved popcorn that night but nobody minded. We also ended up having a much deeper and richer discussion about real things, no shop or shopping talk, no boyfriend problems. We talked about how lucky we were and ways we could give back to the world. 

It is funny how I knew those cookies were going to save the night. I guess I just didn’t know whose.