Inspirational Stories Archives - Page 6 of 24

Acts of Beauty

in Inspirational Stories/by Sandra Marinella

written by Billie Cox

In my extremely long life, I have witnessed ordinary people doing beautiful things for another. Sometimes it’s simple. This week a friend I rarely see emailed me an uplifting poem and mailed me a package filled with thought-provoking articles and a pair of socks that say, “More feminism, Less bullshit.” Hope, mental challenge, humor—I needed all 3. How did she know?

It’s beautiful when someone gives a gift unasked for, unexpected. One of my sister’s dearest friends was diagnosed with brain cancer toward the end of last year. Marilyn and Teresa had been close for over 50 years, sharing ups and downs, tears and laughter. So, when Teresa was faced with a flagging memory and complicated cancer treatment, Marilyn was there for her in spite of Teresa’s insistence that she needed no help, didn’t want to be a bother–all those things one says when unable to face the realities ahead. Marilyn delivered groceries, fed the cats, accompanied Teresa to doctor’s appointments and chemo-therapy, and took her to see an attorney to set up a will. And now she will write Teresa’s obituary. None of those tasks were easy; all of them were beautiful.

Another beautiful thing one can do for another is to give them hope. My daughter and son-in-law had one unsuccessful IVF experience and were unsure they could afford to do another in spite of how much they wanted a child. Over drinks at a happy hour, three of my friends said they wanted to help and each one contributed $1,000. Katie and Russ were overwhelmed since they had feared that parenthood was just not in the cards for them. Now they have twins who have three wonderful fairy-godmothers.

As a member of the Foster Care Review Board, every month I hear devastating stories about parents who are mired in drugs, alcohol, domestic abuse and consequently neglect their children or worse. Some of these parents manage to change their behaviors and re-gain custody; many do not. But I also hear stories about relatives and strangers who are willing to give these kids a loving home. One that stands out for me centered on a little boy, age 2, who due to shaken-baby syndrome had lost his sight and hearing. When it came time for his review, those of us on the board heard that his foster mother had brought him, and we really weren’t sure we were up to the task of seeing him in person. A young woman came in with a darling child who played with a toy during the meeting, laughing and sparkling the whole while. His foster mom had been his therapist and was now in the process of adopting him, a move that had cost her a relationship with a significant other who couldn’t face the challenges ahead. The gift of love is surely a beautiful act that one person can do for another.

All around us there are people doing beautiful things for others. We just have to pay attention, notice, and, hopefully, be inspired to join their numbers.

Write Your Story

in Inspirational Stories/by Sandra Marinella

Eleven years ago, I discovered I had breast cancer. The experience shook me to the core. Although I knew my life would change, it would be a long time before I realized it would be an uplifting and needed change.

Before cancer, I had always planned to pen my story, but I had been too busy raising my sons, too busy with Steve and my friends, too consumed by teaching. All I wrote were pages in my journal. Over the summers I wrote articles, stories, and during graduate school I completed the draft of a novel, but I am thankful it was inadvertently hauled off to Goodwill on the hard drive of my old NorthStar computer.

Then in 2012 I had the diagnosis. According to a recent Mayo Clinic report, half of us will face mutant cells diagnosed as cancer. Fifty percent of us! Several months later, as I lay in bed recovering from a double mastectomy, scribbling in my journal, I intuited a new path. I would finally write my story and weave into it how story and writing had given my life renewed meaning. Of course, my life had been filled with many transitions–marriage, children, teaching, graduate school, but in truth nothing has remade me more than writing my story. It grew me exponentially. Now I watch my writers experience the same wonderful growth as they write.

For me this growth began with a mentor. On my shelves I had all of Christina Baldwin’s books. She was a visionary who started the personal writing movement when I was a young high school teacher. Her work was pivotal in helping me not only to teach writing, but in showing my students how writing could lead to positive change in their lives. I thumbed through all of her books, but I buried myself in Storycatcher—Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story.

The words of this book took hold of me. It helped me frame my understanding of why I had always taught stories and how I had come to believe that we are the authors of our own stories. While we cannot always control what happens to us, we can learn from our experiences, and we can reframe our hard stories in positive ways that encourage personal growth. Baldwin’s book led me into deeper and deeper research—Pennebaker, Michael White, Timothy Wilson—the list is long. When I wrote to Christina about my work, she agreed to help by reading my chapters. A friendship was born.

While I started writing my story in 2012, The Story You Need to Tell wasn’t finished until 2017, five years after I began. At first, I was buoyed by all I was learning. Once I had a messy first draft, the real work began. I had to juggle my learning, test out my ideas, and teach this new method of writing to my students. I wrote life stories and rewrote them. I reframed, edited, rewrote, and did this time and time again. The work was both challenging and rewarding. Often it was lonely.

At some point I wrestled with the issue of publication. I was troubled that at my age I might never publish. But then it hit me. The writing was the real gift. Publication would be like whip cream—nice but not essential. The writing helped me see my life as something that I was creating and giving meaning to. It allowed me a deeper understanding of who I had been, who I was, and who I was becoming.

Christina told me books have their own lives. Writers just give birth to them. This proved to be true. When I connected with a publisher, New World Library, the book charged forward with her own personality. I stood by in awe as she embraced writers and women and cancer patients. While it wasn’t easy to juggle all the hoopla surrounding publication, it was worth it. The connections. The interviews. The learning. The whole of it.

In the end, what did I learn? I learned that we all have stories that need to be told. I learned that we have the power to change our perspective from victim to victor, from survivor to thriver, from loser to winner. Many of my insights are summed up in the book’s foreword.

You cannot go back and change your life stories. Embracing your stories is not about lying or self-delusion. Becoming the author of your story is about claiming the power to define what something means to you and to take charge of the ways your life events impact you and influence how you move forward.

All of us get knocked to the ground. Rather your challenge is watching your best friend shot in the face while at war in Afghanistan or struggling with the accidental death of your son to fentanyl, you must manage your life—and it will not be easy. The promise I uncovered was that we all have the power to take the next step forward and writing can help you find your way to the next risk, the next move, and to keep saying yes to life. You can.

I am grateful to Christina, and I am grateful to my readers. Writing my story changed my life more than I could imagine, and I am calling out to you to find and write your story. I believe it will be worth every hard, lonely, and beautiful moment. Do it!

(A special thank you to Christina Baldwin for her support and the inspiring name she created, Storycatchers!)

From Darkness to Light

in Inspirational Stories/by Sandra Marinella

I first discovered the poem “Kindness” at a time when I was struggling to face my son’s illness and to find some meaning, some purpose, in that struggle. The beauty and wisdom of the poem’s words gave me those gifts. Years later insights from this poem would ripple across my class and change my student Ella, Jason, and others. Recently, poet Naomi Shihab Nye shared with me the story of how she first penciled this poem in a bent pocket notebook years ago.

Perhaps it is fair to say the magic began with Michael. Naomi lived in San Antonio when she first met Michael at a humble old diner called Quincey’s Just Good Food. The lunchroom was crowded that day and they had to share a table. When the conversation turned to their travels, lunch became about more than food, much more. Three months later they were married.

Each of them had traveled in Guatemala the previous summer and they traded notes about their journeys. Each wanted to go further south. They planned an ambitious honeymoon, hoping to travel from the top to the bottom of South America by land.

Their journey began in Columbia. They were young, in love, and excited about the journey ahead. On the sixth night as they traveled in a packed bus through hills toward Ecuador, bandits abruptly stopped their bus and ordered everyone off. Passengers were told to hand over their valuables and every bag they carried. When one local Indian insisted he had nothing, he was pulled away from the group, shot in the chest, and left beside the dusty road, bleeding through his white poncho. Dying.

The passengers watched in shock. Hurriedly the robbers grabbed everything of value. Michael and Naomi lost their money, their travelers checks, their passports, their tickets home, and all of Michael’s camera equipment. After the bandits took off, the passengers reboarded the bus. The driver left Namoi and Michael stranded at the border of Ecuador without money or passports.

“You go from a happy moment in your life,” explained Naomi, “to the worst. A local person being murdered. It could have been any of us.”

It took many hours before the penniless newlyweds were able to convince another bus driver to them back to Popayan where they had originally started their journey. Once there, they visited the police station to seek restitution. While Naomi typed up the police report on a rickety manual typewriter, the policemen laughed at the futility of trying to bring the robbers to justice. While she wrote, Michael decided to hitchhike to the larger town of Cali to check into an American Express office for help.

Still rattled by the experience Michael left Naomi behind, sitting on a bench in the Plaza Popayan near the Catholic church. Surrounded by large, white colonial buildings that shimmered in the sunlight, Naomi meditated quietly. Eventually a calm came over her. Suddenly she heard words. When she looked around, there was no one nearby, but she could hear words coming from beyond her in the voice of a woman speaking softly. At that moment Naomi remembered she had a small bendable notebook and a short nub of pencil in her back pocket. She dug them out and copied the words the voice was saying. It was like a song in the air. A gift from another sphere.

Here are the words she was given.

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.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Michael and Naomis’ passports were found in a garbage can and returned to them. Michael was reimbursed by American Express in Cali for their lost checks and the couple continued their South American adventure—on a less ambitious scale. And Naomi discovered the words in the air that would help many of us learn that something good can come of our pain. To find light amid the darkness.