Who Inspires You to Be Your Best Self?

Our homeless artists inspire me every day.  Johnny O has been on the street for 20 years, and he has never given up. He constantly focuses on helping others, on improving his life and on giving to the world with his uplifting and inspiring poetry.

Cord is a very gentle soul whose quiet presence and comments on Simbi made me feel so welcome there when I joined. He was homeless for a long time, but he keeps a gorgeous poetry blog that blew me away first time (and every time) I read it.  He’s so talented. He also takes some of the most stunning photos I’ve ever seen.

I was homeless as a teen in 1974 (a runaway for a week) and again in 1997 when I lost literally everything.  Both times, I met some really cool people who live in the cracks between everyone else’s reality. These are my people — the ones I feel most comfortable with.  I guess that’s because, in my own way, I live in the fringes too, made “homeless” in this world by my own demons. I live in shelter, in comfort, with abundance and with as much support as I could possibly need. Yet both these kind souls have never judged me and have been really supportive about under1000skies.

The irony of an agoraphobic trying to help the homeless is not lost on me. I hope some day it will be a really cool part of the story of how I overcame this thing; about how under1000skies thrived; and about how, together, we connected and helped homeless artists around the world.

Who inspires you to be your best self?

Posted on KindSpring here:   300 Days of Gratitude Day 13:  Who Inspires You to Be Your Best Self?  

300K+(VI) – 12: INSPIRATION