Surreal.

That’s the best way I can describe writing this post. You see, I have just lost my best friend, my role model, and my personal hero – my beloved grandmother. This is why you all didn't see a post from me yesterday; and my sincerest apologies for having yet to respond to my reader’s cherished comments. I will get back to everyone as soon as possible; and I definitely value and appreciate all your generous support.

Heal Yourself, Heal The World

In the spirit of my grandmother’s legacy, I wanted to share with you some of the important life lessons that this truly inspiring woman has taught me. Normally, I am a very private person; but in finding a surprising amount of inner strength, to which I did not know I possessed in coping with her passing – along with the immense support from all of you out there, my amazing Steemit community – I have actually found the courage to allow myself to open up more to the world and be true to myself.

This is not a post looking for any type of sympathy; this is a post about helping others HEAL themselves and the world. I want to pass along things that I've learned along the way in my own life to you today so that you, our community, and the rest of the world, can heal and reach limitless potential.

Find Freedom To Follow Your Dreams

My grandmother’s family emigrated from Europe to America, as many do, in search of a better life. A life of freedom and liberty for all. A life that so many of us living in this country sometimes unfortunately take for granted.

My grandmother lived in the middle of nowhere, on a large homestead, somewhere in the state of Colorado. She was just one of 7 siblings, in a family where no English was spoken and where each child – no matter what age – already had daily responsibilities and duties to perform from sunrise to sunset on the farm. If you think life’s tough now, just think what it would have been like for early settlers!

When my grandmother was just a little kid, her father tragically passed away, leaving her mother alone to raise a large family on a vast isolated piece of land. My grandmother must have grown up very quickly at this point, and during a period in our country’s history where burdens were more often than not too much to endure.

Nurture Your Inner Strength

However, she believed in the importance of education, to which she excelled, as much as a young country girl could, inside of a one-room schoolhouse; and as soon as she could, she boarded a train all by herself and set out on a journey to our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., in hope of finding a way to sustain herself.

This was during the turbulent time of World War II. Her train was overcrowded with many army troops; and from what I can recall from what she told me once, conditions were very poor. Disease was widespread; and there was no escaping it. Travelers shared whatever little bit of food they had stored inside handkerchiefs and traded any kind of knickknacks in order to make the long and miserable cross-country trek. All this is in stark contrast to domestic travel here in 2016.

What’s more astounding to me; however, is that this strong young woman had never even been outside of her own small town before – and she also did not know where she was going to stay once she reached her destination. She must have been a very passionate individual to want to do anything she could for America during wartime; and she probably thought that living and working in D.C. was a logical choice for this commendable endeavor.

Be Authentic And Accountable For Your Success

With unimaginable faith and drive, she ended up finding a place to stay almost immediately and eventually landed a job with the FBI. From there, she was apparently secured with enough clearance to be nightly tasked with typing top secret classified documents for J. Edgar Hoover in his office. Her career accolades always made me pause and think about my own path. How do we know that we are living a fulfilling life and living to our fullest potential?

My grandmother also had a love of flying and became a talented pilot, at a time when many women were fighting for basic equal opportunities and pay. Talk about following your dreams! I absolutely hate flying but admire people who are so fearless and who also put many hours of training and practice into whatever they choose to do!

Greatness Starts With You

Later, she married my grandfather and became a real estate broker – flipping houses long before it became a “thing” on HGTV. But above all of her accomplishments of being a strong woman, a responsible citizen, a loyal employee, a trendsetting entrepreneur, a supportive wife, a caring mother, and a loving grandmother – she was most importantly a good person. And a GOOD PERSON is exactly what each of us can be too. And if there’s one thing we can each have, it’s total control over that very thing.

We can each make the world a better place just by choosing to be good people. And this is how we can HEAL THE WORLD.

Healers, Unite

If there’s anything more important than focusing on these paragraph titles, which list various vital life lessons that I am still continuing to learn for myself – and these inspiring stories of a grandmother’s life, which was so filled with goodness and real purpose – it’s the importance of just being a good person.

Putting your goodness into practice is easier than you might expect. All that it really comes down to is having love for yourself and the capacity to love others. A passion for whatever it is that you do. And using that passion to spread love and healing across the planet.

Although perhaps somewhat cheesy, the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, most likely said it best when he said that we all can heal the world and make it a better place, just by being good and caring people. By starting with ourselves and striving to be the best that we can be every day, we can bring awareness to important world issues and ease the strife of the human condition.

Our Steemit community is just teeming with exceptionally talented individuals who want to use this new platform to do just that – to heal the world!

Make It Count

Whether you’re involved with a particular charity and are already using this site to shine more light on the cause you’re passionate about, you are doing much-needed good work for your fellow man.

If you’re a mathematical genius, engineer, scientist, health professional, or inventor – like many of our Steemit friends are – you can be channeling your skills in ways that look to solutions and remedies which would put an end to war, hunger, disease, and the energy crisis. Using Steemit and collaborating with other members gives you a huge advantage for healing the world!

I would actually like to pose a new category on the site for #steemit-cares, where members of our online community can post and share ideas that they have, to bring about positive change. Please leave your thoughts about this proposed tag below and share any relevant links with us now so that we can get the conversation started on healing the world already!

Spread The Love

Writers, musicians, and artists of Steemit are highly encouraged to create work that is uplifting and healing to not just our familiar online community – but to that of the entire globe. Environmental and political activists should continue to inform us about situations that need to stop being put on the back-burner. Raising awareness and money for big causes, such as disaster relief and access to clean water, will put Steemit on the map – with all of us having a major hand in this effort to heal the world!

Pave The Way

I challenge all of our tech-savvy friends – and also hackers – to work together in a Steemit hackathon, aimed at solving Earth’s problems and for charitable causes, in order to make a REAL lasting difference. Can we say #steem-hackathon?! I would really like to read your thoughts and suggestions for this!

A community such as ours upholds genuine ideals such as freedom of speech, artistic expression, innovation, transparency; and now we are all fortunate enough to have the ability to bring all our forces together and really be the voice of mankind and to proactively heal the world!

Never Take Your Community For Granted

With tears running down my cheeks as I type this intimate message to you, I truly hope that you feel included in this supportive community, one that should never be taken for granted. Because you DO matter; and EVERYONE MATTERS!

And that you can, in this very moment, feel that flame of inner strength that resides inside you – though perhaps tiny – that is just waiting to be acknowledged, nurtured, and put to GOOD use.

I also hope that you use this strength to love, find the freedom to follow your passion and dreams, stay authentic and accountable to yourself and others, that you use your time and skillset for the highest good of everyone, that you pave the way, make it count, never stop trying – and most importantly – HEAL THE WORLD.

Thank you for reading this!

gainingsteem

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