Positive mood and attitude….I am always inspired when I see it. You know it don’t you? The person waiting on you at the grocery store, the person standing in a long airport security line, the Uber driver. They see the world differently, like each moment is a good one, a blessing. You immediately get when it’s the opposite too.
One of my favorite inspirational women is an octogenarian. She is a master flower arranger. She has her signature look; big round turquoise glasses that are 35 years old, always wears black, honking turquoise jewelry and her silver hair is cropped just so. She’s beautiful inside and out, as is her mood. She creates, she works, and she gives the most amazing hugs. She is vibrant, a creative, spiritual soul. I want to BE her. Hardie is a role model.
You know it when you see it.
Another role model. Alice. She was the appointment before me in the radiation line up. We took the last two slots in the day. She would come straight from work. She was in her 80s. Still working as a loan manager in a nearby bank. She had lost her husband and daughter to cancer. She had a double mastectomy and was sitting next to me as positive as a person could be. I loved seeing her at the end of my day. She was upbeat, darling, and full of life. She had cancer and had lost so much to cancer and yet she was still positive.
I remember the day I came in my first Glam Gown prototype, hot off my sewing machine (literally—my brother in law was my walking partner to radiation that day and he saw me at the sewing machine making the last stitches. (Oh yeah, I lived 1.5 miles from the hospital and walked to and from radiation every day, but that’s another story). It was hot pink and white zebra print. It had rickrack around the neck—does anyone remember that stuff? It was the first gown, not perfected, but still a hundred times better than the hospital gowns. Alice loved it! She thought it was fab; I didn’t have a chance make her one. She “graduated” from radiation no long after that.
I wonder how Alice is doing…I wonder if she knows she was and is a role model for me?
Who do you know that inspires you? Uplifts you even when it would seem impossible? Are you that kind of person?