Welcome to the Why Not Today podcast where we celebrate courage, determination, and the
power of saying, Why Not Today.
I'm your host, Leslie Kane.
Each episode, we dive into inspiring stories of individuals who have taken bold steps,
faced their fears, and embraced the possibility of today.
From entrepreneurs to artists, dreamers to doers, we explore the moments when they had
enough, and they said, or they said, enough waiting.
Why Not Today.
Join me as we uncover the heartwarming, the audacious, and the transformative, whether
it's pursuing a lifelong passion, overcoming obstacles, or simply choosing joy.
Our guests share their journeys and inspire us all.
I started this podcast in honor of my father, Patrick Kane, who often said, Why Not Today.
Remember, you're just one decision away from changing your life.
And my guest today is Mary Latham.
And she, it's not a book yet, but I'm sure it will be, has a movement called More Good,
which is, if you're watching the video, it's her t-shirt.
And I first heard about Mary when I was reading Laura Carney's book, My Father's List, who
has been a guest on the podcast.
And I was reading, I'm like, I need to know her.
And then I talked to Laura, and Laura's like, you need to know Mary.
I mean, you need to talk to her.
And we finally did connect.
And I'm excited to have you on because you've done some really fun, cool things.
And I always love the journey this podcast has taken me on and the connections between
your mom and the March and just life, lots of cool connections that I feel like the people
that I'm meeting on this journey were meant to be in my life.
So Mary, welcome to the Why Not Today podcast.
And why don't you share a little bio on you, not your courage story or your life story,
but a quick bio and a fun fact about you that nobody might know.
Thank you, Leslie.
I'm excited to be here.
I lost my mom in March of 2013.
And I kind of used a conversation that we had towards the end of her life as a bit of
a life raft for my personal life ever since.
It was on the day of the Sandy Hook shooting.
And there was obviously that tragedy.
We were all pretty horrified to read about in the news.
And an act of kindness happened to someone that I worked with that day.
And it was just, let's not get into that yet.
I just want to know who you are.
Oh, like a three second.
Yeah, like who is Mary aside from more good?
And we'll talk about that whole story.
But in the connection, the connect coincidences is your mom actually passed away the same
year my dad did.
And she passed away on my birthday, which is the first and then in 2013 and my dad passed
away or my birthday March first, my dad passed away March 5th of 2013.
So kind of interesting coincidence of dates.
But yeah, tell us who you are and about you that has nothing to do with market.
Just get to know you.
Oh, okay.
All right.
And then we'll talk about that.
Okay.
So my name is Mary Latham.
I am from Long Island, New York, and I'm a wedding photographer and a writer.
And I am a person that believes in the good that's in the world.
And in every person that we meet, I think that everyone has a little bit of good in
them.
And sometimes it's easier to see than other people.
But I think I'm in a constant search in my life for the good in every person I meet.
And I have a fun fact of the fact that I can make my belly button and any in and outie.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
That's interesting.
I won't make you show it.
But so and I love that you're a wedding photographer and you've done all these things.
So it's fun to see people's.
Well, we have multiple hats and multiple sides to our life, don't we?
So tell me what does courage mean to you, Mary?
Courage to me means showing up.
I think showing up in your own life, showing up in other people's lives when they need
it, whether it's family or friends or just noticing someone across the street that needs
help getting across, just kind of constantly showing up when you should be.
And I think that it's really hard sometimes, but I think that really defines your character,
the way, you know, we can't really control what happens to us in life, but we can show
what we do next and how we show up.
And I think that's been something that I've practiced ever since losing my mom is just
how I'm going to show up in the world.
Yeah, love that.
And it's fun to hear everybody's different courage stories and they're all a little different.
You know, someone, and I told you earlier, I said, my brother is the only person that
looked it up in the dictionary.
Believe what it means to us.
So all right, so let's go to your story.
So more good, which is a movement you've started, which I love.
And there's lots of complexities and things you've done with that.
But it all started, why don't you share where it started on the day of the Sandy Hook shooting?
And I love how you took something so terrible and we're able to turn into something so good
and not related.
It's not that you're connected to it, but it was that it was that pivotal thing.
And you know what I found that when people have that pivotal moment in your life, do
you remember where you're sitting, where you're what you're wearing?
You know, the kind of day it was, we have those pivotal things in our life that make
a life changing moment.
And we remember exactly where we're what we're doing.
Yeah.
And I think so many of them also come from a moment of, you know, dark.
Like, I think that if I had just had that conversation with my mom that day and she
went on to live and I, you know, was living my life and everything, I might have not done
what I did.
But because it came right before something so horrible, it was like you kind of clutch
on to anything good to keep carrying on.
So yeah, why don't you start with how this started and the Starbucks and the Sandy Hook
story.
So I worked at a, the continuing legal education in Manhattan in 2013.
And I was working on the morning of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.
And I had just gotten to work that morning.
And after work, I was going to go to a family that I now need for who had a six year old.
And so I was reading the news and refreshing it.
He was still an active shooter.
And I was, as we all were pretty horrified by everything.
And as I was clicking and looking about the story, my coworker came in and he had a coffee
from Starbucks with him and he said, Oh, you really should have come with me today.
And I kind of ignored him and told him I couldn't afford it this week.
And he said, no, no, it was free.
And it kind of finally pulled me away.
Like I was just so hyper focused on this tragedy.
And I turned around and I was like, what are you talking about?
And he was like, yeah, there was a guy in earlier buying gift cards and it was right around
Christmas.
So he was getting them as Christmas presents.
And he bought an extra card at the end and told the barista to charge him $100 and run
it out on all the people in line behind him.
And my coworker was one of those people.
And he had had a pretty rough year so far.
He was a very positive person, but he had been having a rough time.
And so to see him finally so happy again in that moment because of a moment of kindness
from a total stranger was just so uplifting.
And he walked away from my desk and I called my mom.
I was going to say, it's such a little thing, a free coffee, $5, $6, whatever it is.
And dollars now at Starbucks.
$10, yes.
But it's such a little thing that can make a such a difference in somebody's day.
Oh, actually.
Like you.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Like I wasn't even there.
I never even got the coffee and it completely changed my life.
But he told me the story and when he walked away from my desk, I called my mom and I quickly
told her about it, but then I kind of hopped over to the shooting.
We grew up without television in my house.
So which should have been your fun fact.
That's true.
You know, a lot of people know that one.
So I tried to mix it up.
But we did grow up without TV.
And so my mom did not know the news yet at the time.
And so I was telling her all the details and everything about the shooter and he's still
active and how could he do this and how am I going to babysit tonight for the six year
old and not cry on her?
And how is there so much bad in the world?
And she kind of politely interrupted me and was like, Mary, you got to remember that other
story you just told me.
You know, there's, there's always going to be tragedies and horrible things that will
happen in life and in our own life and in the world, but they'll always be more good
out there if you look for it.
And that was kind of the conversation that I ended up clinging and clinging on to a few
weeks later when she, she passed away from cancer.
And it happened a lot quicker than we thought.
We knew she was sick, but she went in for a procedure and something didn't go correctly.
And so it was kind of the whole family assembling into a hospital waiting room and waiting a
few days until she passed and pretty much the worst week of my life.
And just being in that room, which so many people have already been in, you know, it's
such a hopeless feeling when you're in there.
And so I just thought, wouldn't it be nice to have something positive in here, you know,
that people could kind of look through to give them a little bit of hope during these
dark times.
And so I kind of created this, this journey around that thought of, you know, it had started
as a little Facebook project with a friend.
Yeah, let's talk about the Facebook project because that's kind of cool.
Is it still active?
Yeah, well, it's, it's molded into more good now.
So it was about that, that you started, you started that after the Sandy Hook thing.
And there was a story, wasn't there a story?
I love everybody's stories.
There was something your friend.
Yeah.
So right.
Yeah, right after the conversation with my mom, I went to a happy hour with a friend
of mine and we were just talking and I was telling her the coffee story and how, you
know, I feel like these stories are out there.
Like there's like all these moments of kindness that like we don't really get to hear about.
It's just like always darkness on the news.
And wouldn't it be nice to have a place to go and read them?
And she was going through a pretty rough breakup at the time and, and she was saying, yeah,
like I would love that.
You know, I've always thought about that too.
I always wanted to do something called, you know, gratitude with two T's like attitude.
So we kind of came up with this idea over drinks.
Oh, we're going to call it the gratitude project with two T's and we're going to ask people
to send stories in.
And right as we were coming up with this idea, my roommate texted me and she said, you're
not going to believe what happened last night, but she had been a bit over-served at the
bar and left her phone in the cab when she was getting out and it was the battery was
dead.
So the next guy that got in ended up charging it and then use Surrey to call the last contact,
which was her father who said, yeah, they live in 1425 York Avenue and he dropped it
off at the door.
And it was like, you don't really hear those stories happening in New York City.
So just like in that moment when we were creating this thought to have that like land in our
lab was just such a sign that like this is a good idea.
And you know, the rest of the project and everything since then has been very challenging
and beautiful and wonderful.
But like in that moment for something to come through right away was really just the push
we needed.
So we started it as a Facebook page and 11 days after the page launched was when my mom
ended up in the hospital.
Okay.
So yeah, so let's continue that part.
I love the story that, you know, the hospital room and then how you turn it into more good.
Yeah.
So, you know, I was in the hospital waiting room and I was not thinking about the gratitude
project at all.
I had created a separate email for me and my friend Laura that we would check the inbox
and we would, you know, copy paste and post on Facebook.
And I couldn't think about anything positive in those in those first few hours in the hospital.
But by day two, I did need to tell my jobs that I wouldn't be in the rest of the week
once we found out what was going on with my mom.
And so when I opened up my personal email to tell them that I had an email from someone
who had sent me a story and they didn't know where to send it.
So they had sent it to this email and I read it and it was a story from a girl who had
lost both of her parents at that point.
She was from Poland.
She was friends with my sister and she didn't even know what was going on with us.
She just wanted to share a story.
And to read a story from someone that had gone through twice what I was about to go
through and only child, you know, most of her families in Poland, like, and here she
is focusing on this beautiful moment of kindness that someone had done for her was like a little
shred of hope in the waiting room that that week.
And I thought, what am I doing?
Like, here I have this whole other inbox of people sending stories in and we're just sitting
around a hospital bed and I should be reading them.
So I read my family that story and then I opened the inbox and started looking through
the stories and it just that was kind of where the idea of the book was born to, to collect
stories and to put them in a book to donate to waiting rooms in hospitals across the United
States.
And at first I didn't really have an exact plan.
I knew I wanted to travel to do it, but I didn't have it exactly mapped out.
No pun intended.
But, but I did realize shortly after getting out of the hospital and going through everything
with my mother that stories weren't coming in as much like, you know, with anything,
any project, you have that wave of excitement in the beginning and people are sharing and
it's really rolling.
And then there's kind of just you hit a rut and you're not getting as much content or
people aren't reaching out as much.
And so instead of getting discouraged by that, I decided I was just going to go out there
and find the stories myself.
And so I kind of created this plan where I would tell people I wanted to highlight moments
of human kindness across our country.
And if they knew of any stories or any people that would let me crash on their couch or
in their bedroom as I traveled through, let me know.
And so I made a little video with my friend.
I posted on Facebook, people started tagging people and I kind of took off from there and
I got in my car in October of 2016.
I was on the road for three years and actually I took my mom's car.
So I was the youngest of four children.
So leaving New York City, I was the only kid without a car.
So I got my mom's Subaru out back, which was the car I took for my journey.
That's awesome.
So you just went, just planned, planned, did you have a plan or you just got them in the
car?
Did any of us have a plan?
Yeah, I mean, I do and then it all gets messed up.
It's fun to have a plan and then things kind of work out the way they want to instead.
But I had an idea, I'd say for sure, of what I wanted to accomplish and it really, it morphed
into so many other things than I thought it would be.
But the mission was to hit every single state and to collect any moments of human kindness
I could.
And I thought they'd be more so stories of, you know, like the coffee guy and someone buying
someone a coffee or buying some dinner once at a restaurant, but it kind of morphed into
also getting to communities and having people reach out and say, oh, you really got to meet
this kid Ben.
You know, there was this kid in West Springfield, Massachusetts who had been diagnosed with
cancer and when he went into remission, his mom said, you know, how do you want to celebrate?
We could, you know, go to Disney World or, you know, she just giving them all these options
of fun ways to celebrate.
And he said, I think I just want to collect a bunch of toys and bring them back to the
hospital to the kids that are still stuck there.
And he was like seven years old.
Yeah.
And a friend of mine whose daughter, I think at five or six had leukemia and she started
a thing that and she, when she was in the hospital, she had a red bat, her red wagon
and she had people donate toys and she went and gave them to people.
Kind of same story.
Oh, that's awesome.
There's a really good movie I think called the red wagon, right?
The little red wagon.
No, is it?
I don't know.
Maybe that's where she got it.
No, I mean, it's never enough.
But yeah, but that's a, you should read that.
But you should read it.
Okay.
Look it up.
It was during Hurricane Katrina and a little kid in Florida took whatever supplies he could
in a little red wagon all the way to like to Louisiana.
Wow.
I have still not watched it myself, but someone told me about it on my road trip.
Okay.
We might have to watch that.
Hey.
Yay.
So, all right.
So, the kid, the kid with the, that's so cool that, you know, people, so he, he, yeah,
his name was Ben and he dressed up like Captain America and he hundreds of toys to Bay State
Hospital in Massachusetts.
And so then it became, you know, meeting him and meeting his family, like his mother was
a single mother and he was one of two children and to go into their home and not just be
sitting in New York and have someone email a story of a picture of him dressed up cute
and this is what he did.
I was in their home behind closed doors, like really getting to know Ben and like the struggles
they have as a family and his mother and, you know, playing a game of tag outside before
I left, but then like having to stop for a little while so he could catch his breath.
Like all of those little pieces that I would have never gotten if I was sitting behind a
computer and just sharing the stories.
I was really, you know, in the story now.
Wow.
That's really cool.
Yeah, so it was, it was really an array of stories between people like Ben, people who
lost a child and started scholarships, people that donated a kidney to a total stranger,
and then those, and then those small moments, which are so important because they're translatable,
you know, like we always feel like an act of kindness has to be this huge thing, like
we donate a kidney or we buy the neighbor's kid a car for college.
Like it's really small moments where we just pay attention to the need and then we act
on that.
And one of my absolute favorite stories from the whole journey was, was a moment like that
where there was a woman working at a bank and she was having a really bad day and it
was visible on her face and a customer came in to take money out and looked at her and
said, are you doing okay? Like, is there anything I can do for you?
And she was super embarrassed.
She didn't know the woman.
And so she said, oh no, you know, nothing, some M&Ms won't help when I get out of work
later.
And they laughed and the woman left.
And then 30 minutes later, she returned and slid a bag of M&Ms under her window and walked
away.
She never saw her again.
She's telling me this story 30 years later.
Wow.
She's called her kids and her grandkids and it's just like, you never know, you know,
you spend so many moments like that that have probably happened in our life where someone
pays a little bit of attention to us.
But what made me really think about it was in the beginning, I thought, oh, maybe she
stabbed her toe that day or her boyfriend broke up with her.
Like, why was she upset?
But by the end of three years and being in and out of all of these different people's
lives and in their homes, everyone is going through something right now.
And to like,
Yes.
To know that it could have been that her uncle had died in a car crash or she was diagnosed
with cancer.
And all carrying these really heavy traumas and events in our life.
And so that's why these moments of kindness really stick out and become so clear when
we're in that darkness.
Yeah.
I'm so funny.
Everything you're talking about is exactly what I'm seeing and finding with this podcast
is, although I'm not in person with a lot of people, I feel like I am walking into their
story and finding stories behind stories and just, and people are just referring me left
and right.
Like you got to meet this person and you got to meet this person.
And so it's been really cool.
But yeah, there is always a story behind that whole story and we're having a, it's hard.
Life is hard.
And there's a lot of stuff happening and everybody, you know, we have the social media life that
everybody sees and it looks like everything's perfect, but it's not.
And I was somebody talking to somebody yesterday and said, we got to be more curious and not
judgemental.
Like when somebody has to have on a bad day, not say, oh, they're just mean, but like,
what's going on?
You know, or just give smile back or compliment somebody.
It's just, and it's all the little things.
And I think that's what I found about courage and why not today?
It's not necessarily all the big things that is happening, but it's the little things that
make a difference and people here and give people permission and hope.
I always talk about this often because I wear it a lot.
I have a starfish necklace.
And do you know the story of the starfish?
Love it.
Yes.
I love it.
I love a starfish necklace.
That's such a good thing.
So I am, yeah.
And I talk about all the time and it's like that kid walking on the beach, throwing starfish
in the ocean and the man is like, what are you doing?
So I can save in the starfish.
He's like, how could there's thousands?
How can you save it?
I picked one up through the ocean.
I saved that one.
And so you never know how that one person that's going to listen to a podcast, listen
to your story, did your gratitude, you buy Starbucks coffee, you give them M&Ms, how
that one person, you can make a difference.
And that movie that just came out, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.
It's Ordinary Angel.
Ordinary Angel.
I'm going to write it down.
It's a movie theater.
It's Hillary Swank and this family, it's a whole side note, but you know, might as well
share it here.
So it was going to be a conversation.
This family, the wife dies of I think cancer young and she has two, they have two young
girls, the five year old needs a lung transplant.
And Hillary Swank, the character is a hairdresser, an alcoholic, gone out totally wasted the
night before, goes to this convenience store to buy some more alcohol and sees the article
in the paper about the funeral of the mom and the lung transplant and walks into the
funeral and goes to it and then starts doing things to help this family.
And it's a true story out of Kentucky, but just, and the, the Starfish story they read
and they reference a lot in that story.
Yeah.
It's just, you know, it's those little things that there are, there is more good out there.
Yeah.
There was, that just made me think of the, there was a guy in Ohio that I met who, he
was just browsing Facebook before going to bed one night and he was married.
He had a three year old son at the time and he saw on Facebook because of, I don't know
if it was in his area or someone had shared it that was connected to someone else, but
he had no connection to the man, but a man had, there was a picture of a man and his
three year old son and he needed a kidney.
And the guy browsing was just like, this could be me.
Like that could be me and my son.
I could need this.
And so he went and like got all the tests, which they literally give you a psych evaluation
when you want to donate a kidney to a stranger because they're like, you can.
And so they did that.
And he ended up donating his kidney to him.
And it was just that simple of a thought, like just this could be me.
And if we just thought like that, you know, and it's those, and it's also the random looking
at Facebook before you go to bed one night, you know, the people you see, like, I mean,
how I met you is through Laura and I met Laura because I was watching CBS this morning on
Father's Day.
I never watched CBS this morning ever.
And I can tell you exactly where I was, where I was sitting, what I was doing, and it's
led me to so many connections.
Yeah.
And we just, we need to pay attention.
I think that's a big message is instead of just going just mindlessly living our life
to pay attention and look for the good and the things people are doing out there.
So it is more good.
So but I know it wasn't all good on your journey.
It was hard, wasn't it?
It's sometimes every day.
Okay.
Um, but it, it was, um, yeah, I mean, you know, I was staying with strangers to finance
it.
So I was in and out of 154 homes over those three years.
And so to walk in every night to, you know, or every couple of nights to a new home, tell
your story, hear their story, um, stay up late because for them, it was only one night
for you.
It was every night.
Um, I just kind of chat and talk about deep traumatic moments in the person's life.
Um, it was really heavy.
It was heavy and I'm not a licensed therapist.
So I didn't really know how to separate a lot of the time.
Um, I carried a lot of those stories with me and I still do.
Um, it's been a really hard time processing all of it, which is why writing the book has
been, um, rather challenging, but I do feel like I'm finally in a good place and flowing
now, but it was definitely, um, you know, a lot of people would always ask if it was
a healing journey.
Um, and I would kind of laugh because it didn't feel healing.
Um, but it, it broke me into a million more pieces that kind of, I always love that quote.
It's like, you know, when you lose someone you love and it shatters your heart into a
million pieces that let all those cracks allow so much more light in.
So it was such a bittersweet experience because I have all these amazing connections and stories
and people that I have in my life now, um, because my mom died.
And so I was going to ask you if you were in touch with the people still.
Yeah.
And actually I had, um, you know, one of the stories I collected was in California and
it was a family who lost their daughter.
She was 16 years old and she had gone over to her friends on Christmas break and they
were drinking and she got alcohol poisoning and her friend didn't like her friend was
drunk too.
I guess didn't realize and she was just kind of propped her against the toilet and, and
she passed away.
And, um, and it was horrible and tragic and she didn't even really drink that much.
She just never had drink before and the mother goes around now to schools.
I'm really sorry about that.
What I mean here.
Oh, you don't hear the siren?
Huh.
It, that's so funny.
Cause on my podcast thing it says it's playing music, but it's a fire alarm next door, which
is like a hundred feet away.
I don't know how it's amazing.
Okay.
I can pick up right from that.
So the mother who lost her daughter goes around to schools and she speaks on awareness,
you know, alcohol awareness and, um, and informed students so that something like that won't
happen to them.
And you know, it was just one of the many stories where it's so inspiring.
Like here you went, you know, for me, I lost my mom.
I had an amazing relationship with her.
Um, she was the best person.
And so to be able to kind of take her advice and go out there and look for good was, you
know, while it wasn't easy, it was a beautiful mission.
And so for this woman to tragically lost her daughter and then to go into these schools
and have to relive that nightmare just to educate and help others is so incredibly inspiring
to me and, and showing up, I mean, showing up to like the utmost.
Um, but she, uh, I was writing about her the other day and I was finally in California
in my writing, which was kind of my halfway mark on my trip.
And I just wanted to fact check something, so I looked up their website and I noticed
that their daughter had written a letter a few, like three or four months before she
passed away.
She flew to New Zealand and I don't know if it was a project for school or she was just
a creative person, but she wrote a letter on the flight because it was so long that was
titled if the plane crashes.
And so she wrote a lot of her loved ones, which was, yeah, it was insane.
And it was such a beautiful letter.
And she like called out like all of her close friends and her family and everything, like
a little paragraph for each of them.
So it was like, how beautiful for them to have this.
Um, but at the end of the letter, you know, she touches on a lot of different things that
I mean, I was sitting here writing yesterday and in like a really in a rut and like in
a hard place.
And I find this letter and I'm sitting there and I'm like crying on my computer reading
this, this letter and I, I messaged her parents and I said, you know, I just want you to know
I'm writing about you guys today and that, um, while I'm sure every single day is extremely
painful for you, she's still making an impact and affecting us.
And I, I needed this letter so desperately today and to find it was just so lucky.
And so, and they wrote back, but it was so, I definitely try to keep the connections going
with some of the nonprofits I work with now, um, that I stayed connected with.
But, um, yeah, it was the journey was definitely, um, it was really heavy.
And emotional, but it was also quite a punch in the face of perspective.
Yeah.
Seeing life, um, that story about the letter and the mom brought something else.
First of all, the woman that, you know, so many people take the bad and make it good.
Like mothers against drunk driving was a woman whose child was killed by a drunk driver,
like Laura, what she's done with advocacy about distracted driving.
Um, but Oprah Winfrey, I don't know.
There's a book called, um, what is it?
I don't know.
It's a daily like simple acts of kindness kind of book.
I have to look it up to see exactly what it is, but one chapter is on gratitude.
Do you have it?
Oh, I was going to say, you're going to pull the book out.
No, the window was open and Sarah, somebody, but coffee table book, but I don't know.
So this is a book by somebody else.
Sarah, somebody I've got it, which I'll show you when we're done.
Um, and maybe note, note it in the show notes, but, um, this one of the chapters is on gratitude
and Oprah found the book started doing it talk and she did several stories on gratitude
and a gratitude journal.
I don't know if you saw any of those things with your gratitude project, but there was
a young girl that actually is in a North Virginia area that would do her gratitude journal
every night.
Well, unfortunately she passed away.
I'm not sure exactly how, but her parents took her gratitude journal and made laminated
bookmarks that you could email the parents and they'd send you a set of them.
And I still, I ordered them and this was years ago and I still have these laminated bookmarks
that have her information on her.
And then it has on the back her gratitude journal for the day or whatever.
And I still use them in bookmarks.
I have a staff alone and I think about them often and, you know, how many lives it touched
by the marks and Oprah talked about then, I guess the bookmarks.
So it's kind of cool how, you know, people do live on.
And I think that's one of the things I'm doing with this podcast, my dad's legacy living
on and his stories and his connections.
And yeah, I love them more good.
And I think we could talk forever about it and we need to figure out a time to meet in
person sometime.
Yeah.
Actually, Laura is coming down here to speak.
I started a luncheon and she's going to be a guest speaker at our luncheon.
So if you ever know the Virginia, let me know.
That's awesome.
I'm actually going to be in Virginia in April, but in Charlottesville.
Okay.
Well, I'm two hours from Charlottesville.
Not far.
So yay.
So how would you encourage somebody else to do something courageous?
Go on a trip, look for the story, live their life.
Um, well, to look for the story, I think they should just be the story.
Like I feel like it's that kind of concept.
If you are looking, you know, if you want light, be light.
So I think that they can create their own story by going out and buying someone a cup
of coffee today for the person in line behind them or calling a relative or a friend they
haven't talked to in a while and just checking them in with them or sending them a text that
they're thinking about them.
I think that sometimes we're constantly looking for stuff that we could be doing ourselves.
Um, but I think also, yeah, to go on a trip, you just have to go.
I mean, I was terrified.
I, I didn't really exactly have a plan.
I mapped out, um, I really had just mapped out from a thing on Google that was the best
route around the United States.
And um, I printed it out and I put some tax and post-its on it with people reaching out
and connecting to me.
And then I completely kind of went off.
I mean, they used it as a basis, but I went off.
I think he's doing it with landmarks.
I was obviously not doing landmarks.
Um, but yeah, you just kind of have to start and, um, it's, it's always going to be scary.
There's always going to be something that comes up.
There's always going to be a reason to push it to the next day or week or month or year
or I'll do this when I'm retired or I'll do, and this is not a retirement gig.
Um, but you know, just we'll come up with a million excuses.
So you really just have to do it.
Just start, say, why not today and do it?
Why not today?
Yes.
So, um, I always try to pinpoint back to my dad, like people like, I never met your dad,
but I like, when we talk, find connections.
So the first one is my dad always saw the good and nothing was ever not figure out.
You know, it was like some, something happened.
He's like, well, something good will come and he would search for the good.
Um, the adventure of your trip.
Um, we, and you have to listen to my podcast episode.
I did last, it was, um, came out March 2nd and I interviewed my mom and one of the courageous
stories I shared, which kind of type of dovetails with what you did is when I was 16 year old,
16 years old and my parents bought a camper, a 30 foot RV and we traveled all the way around
the U S. Um, didn't hit every state, but went a lot and I was 16.
So I really didn't want to do it.
Um, but my dad took five weeks out of, he worked for himself and we'd stop and he literally
get on a pay phone and do work calls, but we did that adventure and our guide was an
old map and an R a camping guide and we go, okay, where's the next campsite that had the
most amenities, the pools and the fun things that we could all do.
Um, because at that point there were five of us, my youngest sister, when they started
on the trip was five weeks old.
I'm like, my mom's like, I haven't done anything courageous in my life.
I'm like, you kidding me?
That was pretty darn crazy and courageous.
Uh, yeah.
So true.
Yeah.
I feel like your mom, for her to think like, I don't have a story or this or that, like,
I always felt like people were doing that on the journey too.
Like they didn't feel their story was big enough and they were constantly comparing it
to something else, but it's, she has been showing up in your life always.
Like that is such a.
And that's what I told her.
I said, you're the most important person to interview and we all have stories and there's
in a little things, just like the more good stories, it's the why not say it's the little
things.
It's some people, it's, you know, getting out of bed in the morning is hard for some
people and you know, all the little things that.
Yeah.
So all the little courageous things that we do and the good things we do and it just adds
up.
And so we need to say, why not today do more good?
How's that for a tagline?
I'll switch it.
And I think that we all have someone, you know, in our life that really impacted us that
we've lost.
And so at the very least, let's live our life for them.
Exactly.
They can't anymore.
And so what are we going to do to, to honor the fact that we're still here and we can
get stuff done.
Yeah.
Last week I had a big birthday and I wasn't really excited about it because life has been
hard recently and I had to come to realization like I'm still here and I'm still kicking
and I feel great.
And you know what?
I need to live my life to the fullest because there's some people that aren't in my life
that haven't been able to and didn't make it as long as I have.
So yeah, lots of lessons.
So thank you for your story and sharing it.
I'm excited.
I've got a couple of fun ideas.
I think I might do with your episode, but thank you for joining us and thank you everybody
for joining us on this inspiring journey.
For every day as an opportunity, take action, chase your dream and make a difference.
So why not today?
Subscribe, like, share, follow the podcast.
You can always find the podcast at whynottodaypodcast.com.
We have a Facebook community now that's just the why not today community.
And remember, say why not today?
Just never know when you can do some more good.
So thank you, Mary, for being our guest today.
Thank you for having me.