One Year of Kindness

Day 365

I made it! Three hundred and sixty five days of kindness, three hundred and sixty five days of blogging about it. One thing is for sure, I could not have completed this adventure without the support and encouragement I received from friends and family. I'm not going to name names for fear of leaving someone out, but please know this; if you left comments on the website, Facebook, or sent me an email, it was very much appreciated. If you told me in person that you liked a particular entry or that you were reading this blog regularly, it was hugely encouraging. Thank you all for keeping me going, start to finish.

And thank you to the folks I have never met but who have followed this adventure in kindness and left comments of support and encouragement. It has been incredibly powerful to know that you were reading.

The biggest thank you of all goes to my husband.  I could not have completed this without his support each and every day.  Thank you for all the times you washed the dishes after dinner, even when you cooked too, so I that I could write. And for all the nights you made sure the kids were in bed and packed and ready for school the next day so that my job simply consisted of the easy part, coming in for the good night hug and kiss. And for the many, many times I insisted you read before I posted, even though you were just about to fall asleep. And for the one or two times I actually woke you up to do this. You know it is true when I say I couldn't have done it without you.

So what did I do today? The last day was the same as my first; picking up trash. My husband, the boys and I went out with our gloves and spent a half an hour filling two garbage bags of debris left exposed by the recently melted snow. It served to remind me of what I learned this year.  Most of the time being kind isn't about doing the big things, it's about doing the right things.

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The Kindness of Strangers is done, but The ABC's of Kindness is just starting,  It is a new adventure in kindness.  As this year ended I realized that I liked being kind and I liked writing. And while doing it every day was an accomplishment I was proud of, documenting it daily  was not necessarily a challenge I wanted to continue. However, writing about it once or twice a week was appealing. And doing it with a friend seemed even better.

A new challenge was born, The ABC's of Kindness. A kind act for a stranger, twice a week, starting with “a” and ending with, of course “z.”  My friend Kim kindly agreed to be my partner in kindness for this new adventure.  We'll start on April 5th at www.abcofkindness.blogspot.com.