Honoring our loved ones with random acts of kindness - February 2024 G&L Community Event

Nineteen years ago I said hello to my only child, a beautiful girl that I named Kristyn. Two years later, I had to say goodbye. 

There are lots of other things about me: I love animals, I write, I live with multiple sclerosis, I’m still not sure of any of the rules of American football, and I have an alarmingly large collection of keychains from around the world. But in so many ways, “bereaved mom” defines me the most because it’s the lens through which I view my world.

I’m living and Kristyn is not. There’s no other way for me to exist now except in the shadow of that still-surreal reality. I will always be in two places: both here in this world and there, in that other world of enormous grief and overwhelming love.  

When I sat down to write Kristyn’s obituary, my now ex-husband requested that I include a line asking people to do something kind in Kristyn’s honor.

That was the spark that lit the fire that has become “Kristyn’s annual teddy bear drive,” that takes place each November and December. Each year my family and I honor Kristyn by collecting donated teddy bears and donating them to the neonatal intensive care unit where Kristyn spent the majority of her short life as well as other neonatal intensive care units in my community.  Over the past 17 years, over 2,500 teddy bears have been donated and gifted to NICU babies and their siblings.  Knowing that Kristen’s memory lives on is the only thing that has kept me going on those really painful days.

The year after Kristyn passed away, I wanted to do something special on her birthday.  So again a spark was lit and I started what I now call “RAK,” day.  On November 4th, I encourage all of my family, friends, and even strangers to make the world around them a little brighter by doing a random act of kindness in honor of my beautiful baby girl.  

Since Kristyn isn’t here to write her own story, all of these random acts of kindness that people have done over the years have written her story for her.  In a way, it’s allowing me to still be a parent and it’s allowing her to still make a difference in the world.

Based on my own experience, I know kindness can be transformative. It certainly is for the recipient. After all, who hasn’t had a simple act of love change the course of their day? But kindness also has a way of changing the person who is reaching out. I am not a better person because of what i do for Kristyn on her birthday and throughout the year, but i do somehow now seem able to see needs that were once largely invisible to me.  And when i do what i can to reach out, even if it’s only something small and simple, that moment of satisfaction and peace is truly soul-restoring.

For me, I suspect it’s also partly relief that I’m finally able to mother someone, because there will always be that part of me that longs to finish what I started 19 years ago. That love still needs somewhere to go, after all. But research has shown that doing good really does make you feel good.

A 2019 Study by Lee Rowland and Oliver Scott Curry, for example, examined the effects of doing acts of kindness for both strangers and friends to determine if the positive feeling changed based on whether or not the person doing the kind deed knew the recipient. As it turns out, it makes no difference—all acts of kindness have equally positive effects on happiness, and the more of them you do, the happier you feel.

As a wonderful added bonus, they also discovered that simply seeing kindness in action makes you feel good too.  And, I believe, makes you want to join in.

That’s the ripple effect of kindness. When you do it, you want to do it more often. When it’s done for you, you want to pass it on. When you see it, you want to join in.  I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that every act of kindness is likely to beget another, which means the love that inspires every good deed is passed on and on into eternity.

I will spend the rest of my life wondering what Kristyn’s life would have been like, and who she would have been. Would she be tall and funny like her dad?  Would she be strong and determined like her Aunt? Or Would she be sensitive, awkward and a little bit shy like me? I don’t know. And the agony of that still takes my breath away.

But I do know that reading about the thoughtful acts of kindness people do on her birthday each year fills me with the kind of love and pride I hear “normal” mothers talk about all the time, and I’m more grateful for that gift than anyone knows.

What is one RAK (random act of kindness) that you have done or can do in honor of your loved one?