【推荐1】I was standing in the checkout line behind a woman who looked to be in her 60s. When it was her turn to pay, the cashier greeted her by name and asked her how she was doing.

The woman looked down, shook her head and said, “Not so good. My husband just lost his job and my son is up to his old tricks again. The truth is, I don’t know how I’m going to get through the holidays.”

Then she gave the cashier food stamps.

My heart ached. I wanted to help but didn’t know how. Should I offer to pay for her groceries, ask for her husband’s resume?

As I walked into the parking lot, I spotted the woman returning her shopping cart. I remembered something in my purse that I thought could help her. It wasn’t a handful of cash or an offer of a job for her husband, but maybe it would make her life better.

My heart jumped hard as I approached the woman.

“Excuse me,” I said, my voice trembling a bit. “I couldn’t help overhearing what you said to the cashier. It sounds like you’re going through a really hard time right now. I’m so sorry. I’d like to give you something.”

I handed her the small card from my purse.

When the woman read the card’s only two words, she began to cry. And through her tears, she said: “You have no idea how much this means to me.”

I was a little startled by her reply. Having never done anything like this before, I didn’t know what kind of reaction I might receive. All I could think to say was, “Oh my, would it be OK to give you a hug? ”

After we embraced, I walked back to my car—and began to cry too.

The words on the card?

“You Matter.”

A few weeks earlier, a colleague gave me a similar card as encouragement for a project I was working on. When I read the card, I felt a warm glow spread inside of me. Deeply touched, I came home and ordered my own box of You Matter cards and started sharing them.

【推荐2】Christmas at my house meant colorful decorations, candles in every window, homemade dinners by Mom and her matching red coat. I always believed that someday my own kids would gather here and enjoy the traditions that had been passed down each December.

Life had other plans Mom found breast cancer in 2006 and died three years later. Three years after her death. I made my yearly trip to my childhood home for Christmas with my dad and sister. When I hunted for Christmas decorations up in the attic, an unusual yellow envelope caught my eye. Inside was a never published children’s book by Mom, dated February 10, 1993. It was titled The Evil Stepmother (Who Wasn’t). It’s the story of a little girl who loses her mother to cancer. Her father soon remarries, and at Christmas, the girl returns home to find her stepmother crying with a woman’s photograph in her hands. The stepmother says that she lost her mother, too, and always misses her most at Christmas.

I read Mom’s book and wondered why she had been moved to write it. She was years away from her cancer at the time. But there was no stepmother in our lives. So I put the book away, found the decorations I came for, and forgot abourt Mom’s book quickly.

Without the home that had been full of so many memories, I didn’t celebrate Christmas any more. I began to avoid the holiday music and even, for a while, the color red.

That changed in December 2017. Dad brought a woman to Christmas unexpectedly. When we first met we hugged each other shyly. Soon, she had Dad and me laughing. It was going so well. The three of us went out to pick out gifts. That’s when “While Christmas” began to play over the store’s speakers. I froze. It was the song Mom sang to me as a child to get me to sleep. Tears streamed down my face.

We got home, and I went to my room to calm down. There was a knock on the door, Dad’s girlfriend. She told me that Christmas was hard for her too and that she had lost her mother to Alzheimer’s.

“Do you see my coat?” she asked. “It was my mom’s. Your dad tells me your mother had a red coat too. Maybe we can wear them together sometime?”

I remembered the scene from Mom’s book and hugged this woman who made my dad happy, who was offering us a second chance at Christmas.

A year later, my sister and I attended Dad’s wedding. This past December, I hosted my first Christmas in New York. My stepmother and I decorated the house, candles in every window. We walked arm in arm down Broadway in our mothers’ red coats.

【推荐3】My 11-year-old daughter Emerson has a serious letter-writing habit and enjoys writing to her favorite people, including our mail carrier, Doug. If you’ve been the receiver of her hand-decorated letters and envelopes, then I know they really make your day.

A letter from Emerson is likely to include some art, a joke and enough questions. But when she wrote to Doug, she put something new in it. “You may know me as the person living here who writes lots of letters…You’re very important to me, helping me stay in touch with friends. I cheer people up with my letters, and you do that too!” Emerson wrote.

The next day, a package arrived with two letters. One was from Doug and the other from his boss, Sara, who shared Emerson’s letter and believed many postmen wanted to thank Emerson. Emerson was overjoyed, but it perturbed me a lot --- if no reply from other mail carriers it would be a big blow to her.

Surprisingly, next day Doug come with two boxes of letters from around the country. These letters were so human, filled with stories about family, pets and kindness. But there was something more in them. People felt seen— some for the first time in a long time.“I work alone in a small rural post office…” “Not many people think about how hard we work…” Emerson wrote back seriously.

I’m sharing this not because I’m a proud dad, but because it’s relatively easy, if we take the time, to give others links they need to be good. We all want to be seen, known and loved. Send a letter. Give a call. Take a step of bravery, like Emerson.