Writing a Blog is not as scary as I had anticipated. Letting go of the emotions around why I never wanted to journal or keep a diary has been freeing.

As a child in elementary school, I loved reading and writing, and won a couple of awards for essays and stories I wrote in the 5th grade! But writing and wanting to be recognized changed when my home life took a turn and parents at that time were not happy. The fears became larger and paralyzing.

Lots of fights, yelling and my sisters and I just wanted to hide! Our accomplishments in school were not acknowledged or praised. We could not do anything right according to them. Every little mistake or failure to do something was noticed and followed by punishment. Cannot remember anyone doing something nice for us, cannot remember feeling safe or loved.

How can you go and do nice things and say nice things to strangers??? This week our assignment was to do something nice every day for someone. Whether it’s a smile, offer help, give a compliment or anything that would put a smile on that person’s face. Talking to strangers, offering compliments on their clothing, their smile, or something is not that hard for me.

When I met my husband, he helped me begin to feel safe and loved and it became easier for me to share and be nice. Being nice, I realized made others be nice to me as well. I enjoyed being treated nicely. Being nice to others I learned made me friends, which I did not have many of growing up.

This week’s lesson called for pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Go out and knock on neighbor’s doors even if I don’t know them other than waving hello or nodding as we acknowledge that we exist, while walking dog or whatever. My usual ‘nice’ to strangers passing them on street or encountering them in store had to go further. Couldn’t be something that was easy for me. I needed to get out there more.

On Saturday, I found that difficult, as I did not have a reason to leave my house! Store encounters were out of the picture. Forcing myself to go out of my routine by making it a personal encounter right within walking distance took effort. All I could think about was ‘do it now’ this time color is Yellow … like the Sun. Bring a little Sunshine to someone.

Well, a friend had given us a bag of fruit Friday night, way too much for us. I usually share some of the apples with our neighbor for their dogs, but this time it was a lot of fruit! I needed to share with another neighbor, so I got dressed, grabbed the fruit, and went out to knock on my neighbor’s door across the street.

No answer, went to the next three houses, no answer. Almost went home and gave up! Oh, but ‘giving up was not an option’ had to do something every day! So went further down the street to someone not necessarily my neighbor but I had said hello to her on occasion. She answered the door! Her face lit up when I gave her the fruit! I felt so happy that she was so glad to receive the gift.

Walked home and felt a sense of peace and gratitude for the courage I had gained thanks to the Lessons in MKE. Found out later she is a single mom with three little ones and having a rough time. Now I have a new friend!