Tag: giving
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25 Days of Giving Day Twenty-Three: Believe
In 1992 I was twenty-two years old and living in Chicago. The market was tough for recent college grads, and after a part-time series of temp assignments and waiting tables, I took a job selling industrial products on the south side of town. It wasn’t a career move by any stretch, but it paid the bills and afforded…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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25 Days of Giving Day One: Pay A Stranger A Compliment
Greetings from the land of Gemini Girl in a Random World, better known as Siberia. It’s that time of year again, and instead of posting porn-inspired Elf on the Shelf pictures like everyone else you’re connected to on Facebook, I thought I’d try something new this holiday season. Inspired by a genuine lack of desire to…
READING BETWEEN THE PINES 