Kindness Counts!

Today begins a new series, called "Kindness Counts" - a weekly feature by me or a guest poster (hopefully mostly guest posters) about acts of kindness and their impact.

The goal? To spread the message of kindness. To help people realize that acts of kindness, no matter how small, can make an impact and change our world and our outlook.

This post from Jenny at The Fisch Tank
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How to choose an act of kindness that made an impact on us? So many choices.

We were in the PICU, sitting with our 11 month old baby, who had recently gotten her MRI - still in a coma on a ventilator, and we found out about the global injury to her brain. The time she went without oxygen after choking on her dinner was long enough for severe damage. Despite being surrounded by amazing family, friends, and probably thousands of people sending healing thoughts to our girl, we felt utterly ALONE. This situation, this life, this child. No one knew what to do. No one knew what to tell us. They were coming along on our journey, and we were leading, with no clue whatsoever as to where we were headed.

A doctor came to visit - a doctor who worked at the hospital, in the special care clinic. A clinic for kids that are "complicated" with special needs. The doctor had heard about us in a strange way, through her brother, who was my husbands co-worker. Without telling us, she knew what we were facing. I remember her words "you have two big hurdles, breathing, and eating" - if you get past those you are going to be in a good place. She was so right. Turns out we got past the breathing (extubation) hurdle, but not the eating hurdle (thus the g-tube).

I also remember this very wise doctor of ours saying in later visits that in this world of special needs, that we should be careful. Careful to have the attitude we want to have. There are a lot of angry, bitter people in this new world we were now in, and if we don't want to live in that place, that we should be careful. Being the sneaky matchmaker she is, she knew another mom with a special needs child in her clinic, and told her a bit about us (without names, I'm sure). That mom gave the doctor her information so I could reach out if I wanted to. That mom also gave her a gift to give me.

The doctor printed up a copy of "Welcome to Holland" and brought us this gift from this mom.

In that gift bag I found a file folder and a notebook. Wow. I didn't even think I needed these things until I saw them. Suddenly all the pieces of paper, consents, information sheets, receipts, forms, everything - every thing had a home. Suddenly we had a place to stuff business cards, and concern areas, and phone numbers and lists of questions. It made me feel better to put order and organization into our lives while we were in this place where we felt spun out of control, and everything was out of our hands. Clearly, this was a gift from someone who really knows what this is like. It was the very first step to getting ourselves together and in a place where we could be an advocate for our daughter.





And then I took out this mom's contact information. And I wrote her an email.

Despite being in the middle of a move, and the middle of birthday celebrations for her big five year old boy, she wrote back with kind words, understanding and empathy. And I had my first friend in the special needs world we had just be thrown into.

And just like that, I didn't feel alone anymore.

And now that mom, my friend Deana, is one of the women in my core support group, my "supermoms." And our "matchmaker" doctor couldn't have been more right. I feel like I am in the right place thanks to this first friend in my "new world."

To this day, this file folder and notebook go almost everywhere with me. Can you tell?

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Coinciding with the start of this series also begins a great online auction - one that will benefit both Cici's special needs trust and Ben's Bells equally. Ben's Bells is a non-profit organization whose mission is to inspire, educate and motivate each other to realize the impact of intentional kindness and to empower individuals to act according to that awareness, thereby changing our world.

Ben's Bells is bringing a distribution of bells to Colorado in May - the funds raised in this auction will go towards funding that distribution. Visit Be Kind Colorado for local details about Ben's Bells. The auction runs from Monday March 21 - Monday March 28. Go to bidsforcici.org or click below to check out the auction! Starts Monday at noon central time.