W O M E N A I D
by Patience Salgado
Missions of Guerilla
Goodness
My circle started to grow and so did my imagination of what a collective power of
kindness could look like. I started to invite girlfriends and their kids on my missions of
guerrilla goodness and write about all that happened. I discovered that lots of people
wanted to offer something kind to the world and in turn themselves, but had no idea
what or how to start. The more we practice the more we learn that none of it is really
very complicated. All we have to do is offer the simple goodness we hold and watch as
kindness changes everything. V
Follow Patience online at Twitter, @kindnessgirl,
or through her blog at www.kindnessgirl.com.
o, go, go!” I yelled. She hopped in the car, slammed
the door and we sped away laughing. It was a day
G
of “ding dong ditchin’” with my 10-year-old niece. We
went to a small field to pick sunflowers from an old
farmer in Southside and left bunches of the deep yellow
beauties on doorsteps all over Richmond.
“Hope is never too far away. Maybe this will help
you find it,” Madeleine wrote on the tag we attached
to a bouquet. This particular brand of kindness, the
random anonymous act, thrilled us both; it was a new bliss to experience together.
The power of kindness has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.
Years ago my mother packed me and my three sisters in an old olive green VW Dasher
and traveled rural Pennsylvania delivering meals, dropping in on a struggling friend,
befriending check-out girls on various errands. This was my first introduction to kindness
work. We didn’t talk about it very much; my parents just lived it, day in and day out. You
could say they were do-gooders, but it was much more than that. This way of living ran
deep, almost as if it was all they were sure of and all they really knew how to do.
While I knew this way of being in the world had been woven into my family story,
I was longing to write my own. I found myself packing my own kids in the car, just like
my mother had. My inherited love of strangers and a deeper connection with myself and
the world took hold in the form of exchanges of kindness. Tiny notes left in books at the
library, a long conversation with an elderly man in the supermarket, a cold drink for a
bum on the street, all of it energized my soul in a way nothing else did or could.
Kindness began to drive me, to define me, to un-do me, and little did I know the
power it would have over me, my life, my entire world. Big or small, kind acts seem to
work their way into the places we need it most, showing us how tender and strong we
all really are, exposing just how much we all need to be loved. It became obvious how
much I needed the very messages I was putting out. There is no selfless good deed but
it doesn’t really matter, the world needs it all. I have been on both ends of kindness and
decided this was the work of my life. When I looked back, kindness had been calling
me all along.

DECEMBER 2009
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