Do you want to become a Johnny Appleseed of love? How comfortable are you with walking up to strangers and talking with them like you’ve known them all your life?

Not really your thing, my friend? Would you like to learn how to do it?

I’m Sheryl, Instigator for The Love and Kindness Initiative. I founded this movement as my way of spreading love and gratitude in the world after my cousin was murdered in late October 2018. I began reaching out to people I know, used to know, or casually know, thanking them for making a positive difference in my life. I committed to becoming a Johnny Appleseed of Love.

Many people new to me think it’s easy for me to do this. They witness me confidently walking up to people I see. They watch me looking strangers in the eyes, saying nice things to them, and seemingly magically falling into conversations in which emotional walls come tumbling down to connect two hearts.

If you want to do what I do, if you want to make The Love and Kindness Initiative your own, if you want to appreciate friends and strangers for the good things they bring to our world but don’t know how to begin, if you want to become a Johnny Appleseed of love, it might be useful if I take down my wall with you.

Please allow me to introduce myself.

I’m shy, like really, really shy. Many years of teaching and hosting radio have taught me how to cover my shyness, but I’m naturally shy.

I’m still recovering from the major stroke I experienced seven years ago. Not only am I naturally shy but, thanks to the big stroke, I frequently wonder how well I’m presenting.

During the first years after the stroke, I experienced a lot of criticism from people who didn’t understand how hard I was working to appear to be “healed,” whatever “healed” was after I’d felt my brain explode. Instead of coming into my world, they wanted me to do something I was unable to do; they wanted me to come into their world. (Thank you, Bob DeMarco of The Alzheimer’s Reading Room blog, for explaining the concept of Alzheimer’s World in which effective caregivers need to realize the only ones who can change are themselves, not their patients.)

My brain had been profoundly damaged. I was unable to be what these people wanted me to be, and they were unable or unwilling to understand why that was. The criticism hurt me at a time in which I deeply needed to be praised, not critiqued, and I wasn’t physically or emotionally healed enough to allow the words of others to bounce off me. I isolated. I became even more shy. Trusting people? Not so much.

I went through years in which the words that fell from my mouth weren’t anywhere near the words I’d intended them to be. I’ve learned to stop caring if I make what are now occasional mistakes in speech but, if I’m meeting someone new, all they have to go on is how well I present in this moment, not how well I might present if I’d had more sleep or more food.

It’s taken years of practice for me to once more walk with speed and purpose. I’ve gone from clutching at the walls for support when I’d walk up and down short flights of steps to lightly touching the railings when I feel the need to stabilize myself. I feel deeply grateful to have regained the ability to walk with speed and purpose, I cherish each bold step I take, but there’s still a part of me that wonders if I will once more lose all I’ve recovered.

I’ve had to relearn how to function in the world, from re-discovering each day which foot goes on the brake and which foot goes on the gas pedal to learning to use my eyes instead of my words to draw people into conversation. I can depend upon my eyes to steadily gaze into the eyes of others. Thanks to some lingering stroke damage, I can’t always depend upon my mouth to move the way I want it to move.

Can you now understand how difficult it might be for me to walk up to strangers and talk with them like I’d known them all my life?

If I can successfully do this, perhaps you can, too.

With all my heart, I hope you’ll join me in The Love and Kindness Initiative. The more people who join with me in celebrating all the sweetness in the world, the more good we can do. If you want to be a Johnny Appleseed of love and don’t yet know how to begin, perhaps the wisdom of Michelangelo can help keep you focused on something other than your doubts and fears.

I’m thinking about my mother as I type this post. She’d be one hundred years old if she’d lived. She died from end stage dementia that showed up many months after she fell on her face and experienced severe brain trauma.

I remember realizing something hugely important one day during her final years, a day when she was yelling at me for something she thought I’d done; fear makes people selfish. Think about this, please. Fear makes people selfish. Doubts and fears hurt us, and doubts and fears hurt others. They cause us to focus on things that push us away from those who only want to love us. They also make those people wonder what they’re doing wrong.

Is that what you want? Or do you want to stay focused on love?

If you see a block of marble, chances are good that you’re looking at that block of marble as it is in the moment. Visionaries stay focused on what they want to achieve, not on how things look in the moment.

Michelangelo, as artists often do, saw the finished sculpture already living within the block of marble. As he so eloquently said:

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” Michelangelo

Michelangelo was committed to freeing the angel from the block of marble. He did whatever he needed to do in order to free the angel. Carving a large sculpture, especially carving a large sculpture using only hand tools, is a lot of work. It’s hard physical labor, requiring enormous vision, mastery and dexterity to remove just enough without destroying the sculpture.

I’m committed to being a Johnny Appleseed of love, thanking people and spreading love and kindness wherever I go. I do whatever I need to do to free myself as best I can from my doubts and fears in order to bring people together. I don’t always succeed with the people I meet, and I’ve had to learn how not to be affected by how others react. Most days contain pure magic. Some days don’t. I handle it better some days than others.

I don’t know what will happen if you join me as a Johnny Appleseed of love in The Love and Kindness Initiative. You might share some of my experiences, and you might have very different experiences. But if you’re committed to freeing the angel from the marble, if you’re committed to freeing yourself from your doubts and fears, if you’re committed to doing whatever it takes to bring more love and kindness to the world, whether you do this with just one person you know well or with as many strangers and loved ones as you can reach, you’ll have taken action that just might turn out to be something wonderful for all of us.

Let’s do this together.

Copyright 2019 by Sheryl Hirsch-Kramer. All rights reserved for any further use.