Once again, just when I thought I was doing great, I found myself in tears on four different occasions today. All it takes is a nice word or an act of kindness, a thought, or even just a look. It catches me off guard time and time again. I have so much thinking to do and a million things I want to read to try and understand the unexplainable. And write… I suddenly feel as though I could write for days and days.

I recently (and thankfully) crossed paths with a lovely woman through my Caregivers writing; earlier this week she shared part of a beautiful poem by Naomi Shihab Nye on her blog. The full poem can be found here, but what follows is the first stanza – it truly spoke to me. Thank you, Elaine, for sharing this at just the right moment.

Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness…
~Naomi Shihab Nye