Author: Stacie Chadwick
-
25 Days of Giving Day Seventeen: Check Your Ego At The Door
Birmingham, AL: $481.00. Charleston, WV: $1,000.00. Moraine, OH: $15,000.00. Bellingham, MA: $20,000.00. All the denominations listed above are payments that Secret Santas across the country have donated towards items, often toys and children’s clothes, held on layaway. I love the anonymity of these acts because secretly extending a helping hand to another person is the purist form of…
-
25 Days of Giving Day Sixteen: If You Can’t Say Something Nice Don’t Say Anything At All
I know how to use my words, and when I’m angry, they quickly become weapons. There’s nothing like cutting someone down to build yourself up. It feels great. For about five seconds. Then the rush of self-righteous adrenaline that so efficiently fueled your vocabulary dump completely dissipates, and you’re left wondering what made you so mad…
-
25 Days of Giving Day Fifteen: Speak Up for Someone Who Can’t Speak for Themselves
Not long ago, I found myself rushing to the grocery store to get something one of my kids needed the next day for school. It was late and I was tired, preoccupied, and annoyed. Like most moms, I was running behind an endless to-do list that seemed to square itself and multiply whenever I wasn’t looking. Snow…
-
25 Days of Giving Day 13: Stop and Listen
When I was a child, I was so quiet that my parents nicknamed me “Mouse”. It suited me perfectly, because instead of speaking up, I was much happier keeping still, burying my nose in a book, and staying out of the conversation. Then I turned 13. Ready to face the world in my Capezio shoes, pleather pants, and…
-
25 Days of Giving: A Week of Saying I Love You
Love is one of those rare things in life that you can buy never get or give too much of…three words that, used often, will win friends and influence people gain exponential power and potency over time. With this thought in mind, the Challenge for Days Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve is to say “I Love You”. Because…
-
25 Days of Giving Days Six and Seven: Get Inked
I’m a textbook discarder. Anytime my husband brings something into the house, I’m on my way through a different door hauling something out. I’m all about clean lines, order, and lists. Lots and lots of lists. Giving away unnecessary stuff makes me feel good, and a lack of clutter equals a lack of complication in some kind of metaphysical, big…
-
25 Days of Giving Day Five: Ask Someone’s Opinion
Everyone wants to be heard. When you really listen to another person (like, drop the cell phone, tune out your surroundings, serious eye contact kind of focus) whether it’s a spouse, friend, child, client, or stranger, you take a meaningful step toward making them feel important. With this thought in mind the Challenge for Day Five…
-
25 Days of Giving Day Four: Find the Silver Lining
When I was two years old my parents got divorced. I was lucky in a way, because at the time I was too young to understand that separation, at it’s most basic level, is the physical manifestation of pain being split in two. By the time I’d turned five Mom had remarried. We left Atlanta, where…
-
25 Days of Giving Day Three: Free Up Some Space
It never fails that when I’m in line at Costco with a double-wide full of everything I don’t need, some guy is patiently standing behind me with three packages of flan. So I step aside. I’m always surprised at how appreciative people are when I let them go first, but when I think about it…
-
25 Days of Giving Day Two: Say Thank You
Thank you. Why are two of the simplest words in the English language sometimes so hard to say? When I was a senior in high school, I applied to two colleges. The first was the school I was destined to attend. The second? An afterthought, just in case the world’s largest sink hole, triggered by a flying unicorn…
READING BETWEEN THE PINES 