Kindness Advent Calendar 2021

Hello lovely,

I really hope you are keeping safe, well, and happy as we continue through these challenging times, and as we head into the festive season.

What another year this has been! It has been difficult for so many of us, in so many different ways. Amidst all the challenges, one positive thing has been hearing about all the incredible kindness acts taking place across our communities, our countries, and all over the world. I’m sure you’ll agree that there have been so many uplifting stories, and often it’s the smallest acts of kindnesses that make the biggest impact.

This may not be the festive season we all hoped for, but I hope it’ll be the best it can be under the current circumstances. I’d like to invite us all to make kindness a part of that – showing kindness to those around us and to those in our communities, and remembering to be kinder to ourselves too!



The kindness act suggestions continue to be covid-safe, and aren’t intended to put your lovely self, or others at unnecessary risk. If you come across any which you feel this is the case, then please do skip it, or substitute with your own kindness act.

What is a Kindness Advent Calendar?

If this is your first Kindness Advent Calendar, I’d like to wish you a very warm welcome and thank you for joining us. This works just like a normal advent calendar, but instead of the usual chocolate countdown (which, of course, we can still enjoy alongside this one 😊), we are embracing the true spirit of Christmas by carrying out 25 (or as many as you are able) random acts of festive kindness.

Every single act of kindness counts, and I’ve made the kindness act suggestions quick, easy and mostly free, so anyone and everyone can join in.

Please share these calendars to help spread even more kindness

Let’s get as many people as we can involved and share this with family, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, classmates… and share all over social media 🙂

So, without further ado, I’d like to invite lovely you and yours to join me in spreading a little kindness this month.

In the spirit of Christmas, there are FOUR kindness calendars to choose from: Kindness Advent Calendar, Kindness Advent Calendar FOR KIDS, Kindness Calendar December 2021, and Kindness Calendar December 2021 FOR KIDS.

Kindness Advent Calendar 2021

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download it easily from there.)

Kindness Advent Calendar FOR KIDS

I receive so much positive feedback from parents and teachers about the Kindness Advent Calendar for Kids, I thought I’d create another one this year.

It’s such a fun and easy way for teachers and parents to get children involved in spreading a little kindness in the lead up to Christmas, and a lovely way of showing children what a positive impact they can have on the world.

So here it is…

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download it easily from there.)

Non-Advent Calendars

Over the years, I’ve been asked to create a generic, non-advent Kindness Calendar for December, and include this year’s here:

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download them easily from there.)

If you’d like to share your kindness experiences, hop on over to my Kindness Community Facebook Page: Spreading A Little Kindness. It’d be lovely to see you there.

Wishing you a Dazzling December and a FAB-YULE-OUS festive season,

Thank you so much for spreading a little festive kindness.
Love+hugs, Helen 💚

p.s. I’d really love to hear about your kindness experiences in the comments below…

Kindness Advent Calendar 2020

Hello lovely,

I really hope you are keeping safe, well, and happy as we continue through these challenging times and head into the festive season.

What a year this has been! It has been difficult for so many of us, in so many different ways. Amidst all the challenges, one positive thing that has really stood out for me this year, is hearing about all the incredible kindness acts taking place across our communities, our countries, and all over the world. There have been so many uplifting stories, and often it’s the smallest acts of kindnesses that make the biggest impact.

This may not be the festive season we all hoped for, but I hope it’ll be the best it can be under the current circumstances. I’d like to gently invite us all to make kindness a big part of that – showing kindness to those around us and to those in our communities, and remembering to be kinder to ourselves too!

This month’s kindness act suggestions continue to be lockdown-friendly. They aren’t intended to put your lovely self, or others at unnecessary risk. If you come across any which you feel this is the case, then please do skip it, or substitute with your own kindness act.

If this is your first Kindness Advent Calendar, I’d like to wish you a very warm welcome and thank you for joining us. This works just like a normal advent calendar, but instead of the usual chocolate countdown (which, of course, we can still enjoy alongside this one 😊), we are embracing the true spirit of Christmas by doing 24 random acts of festive kindness.

Every single act of kindness counts, and I’ve made the kindness act suggestions quick, easy and mostly free, so anyone and everyone can join in. Let’s get as many people as we can involved and share this with family, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, classmates… and share over social media.

So, without further ado, I’d like to invite lovely you and yours to join me in spreading a little kindness this month.

Kindness Advent Calendar 2020:

Kindness Advent Calendar 2020 V2

UPDATE: I have been made aware that the calendars are taking a little longer than usual to download. I’m currently exploring to see if I can recifiy this, but until then, please give the calendars a little more time to download. I’m so sorry for any inconvenience.

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download it easily from there.)

Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS 2020

v

I receive so much positive feedback from parents and teachers about my Kindness Advent Calendar for Kids, I thought I’d create another one this year.

It’s such a fun and easy way for teachers and parents to get children involved in spreading a little kindness in the lead up to Christmas, and a lovely way of showing children what a positive impact they can have on the world.

So here it is…

Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS 2020
Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS 2020

UPDATE: I have been made aware that the calendars are taking a little longer than usual to download. I’m currently exploring to see if I can recifiy this, but until then, please give the calendars a little more time to download. I’m so sorry for any inconvenience.

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download it easily from there.)

Non-Advent Calendars

Over the years, I’ve been asked to create a generic, non-advent Kindness Calendar for December, and include this year’s here:

Kindness Calendar December 2020
Kindness Calendar for KIDS December 2020

UPDATE: I have been made aware that the calendars are taking a little longer than usual to download. I’m currently exploring to see if I can recifiy this, but until then, please give the calendars a little more time to download. I’m so sorry for any inconvenience.

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download them easily from there.)

If you’d like to share your kindness experiences, pop on over to my Kindness Community Facebook Page: Spreading A Little Kindness. It’d be lovely to see you there.

Wishing you a Dazzling December and a FAB-YULE-OUS festive season,
Thank you so much for spreading a little festive kindness.
Love+hugs, Helen 💚

p.s. I’d really love to hear about your kindness experiences in the comments below…

Kindness Advent Calendar 2019

Kindness Advent Calendars Combined

Hello lovely

I can’t believe it’s this time of year again, my favourite time of year… time to spread a little festive kindness around our homes, workplaces, schools, and communities.

Yippeeeee!!

Unfortunately, I’ve not been too well recently. My Chronic Fatigue Syndrome symptoms have been flaring up left, right and centre, and as I write this, I’m on bedrest while I recover. But I’ll still try to spread as much kindness as I possibly can, and hopefully I’ll feel well enough to venture outside soon.

If you’ve joined me in spreading a little festive kindness before, I’d like to say a huge…

Thank you!

You really are amazing. I mean that.

I know that the acts of kindness we do make a huge difference and help to brighten others’ day, as well as our own. I also think that particularly during these times of trouble and turmoil, it’s such a beautiful way to show there is still oodles of good in the world.

So, on that note, I’d like to invite lovely you and yours to join me spreading a little kindness again this year.

For anyone new to my Kindness Advent Calendars, I would like to give you a big warm welcome.

I’m so happy you stopped by. I can safely say that we’re going to have a whole lot of festive fun this year.

To recap, my Kindness Advent Calendar works just like a normal advent calendar but instead of the usual chocolate countdown, we are embracing the true spirit of Christmas by doing 24 random acts of festive kindness.

Kindness Advent Calendar 2019:

You can download it for free here:

Kindness Advent Calendar 2019
Kindness Advent Calendar 2019

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download it easily from there.)

Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS

I received so much positive feedback from parents and teachers about my Kindness Advent Calendar for Kids, I thought I’d do one another this year.

It’s such a fun and easy way for teachers and parents to get children involved in spreading a little kindness in the lead up to Christmas, and a lovely way of showing children what a positive impact they can have on the world.

You can download it for free here:

KIDS Kindness Advent Calendar 2019
KIDS Kindness Advent Calendar 2019

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download it easily from there.)

Non-Advent Calendars

Over the years, I’ve been asked to create a generic, non-advent Kindness Calendars, one for grown ups and kids, and include this year’s here:

Kindness Calendar December 2019:
KIDS Kindness Calendar December 2019:

I know December can be an extra busy month for most of us, and we can find ourselves rushing around trying to get everything ready in time for the Christmas holiday. With that in mind, I’ve made the acts on my Kindness Calendars quick, easy and cheap (well, most of them are free!). So anyone and everyone can join in.

You may want to mix it up and swap the acts around, adapt the acts to suit you, or even change them for your own kindness acts. And don’t worry if you can’t do an act of kindness every single day, sometimes it’s just not possible as I know too well with the nature of my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome flare ups.

But even if every one of us manages to do just one kindness act on one day this month – imagine how amazing that would be!

Every single extra act of kindness counts, and together we are making the world a kinder place. So let’s get as many people as we can involved and share this with family, friends, work colleagues, classmates… and share all over social media 🙂

And don’t forget to join me on my kindness community page ‘Spreading A Little Kindness’ on Facebook, and if you post about your kindness act, please use the hashtag #KindnessCalendar so we can all keep track of all the wonderful kindness we are sharing.

Wishing you a Dazzling December and a FAB-YULE-OUS festive season, and let’s remember to be kinder to ourselves as well, we are definitely worth it!

Thank you so much for spreading a little festive kindness.

Love+hugs, Helen 💚
p.s. I’d really love to hear about your festive kindness experiences in the comments below…

Kindness Advent Calendar: December 2018

Hello lovelies!

I can’t believe it’s this time of year again, my favourite time of year… time to spread a little festive kindness around our homes, workplaces or schools, and communities. Yippeeeee!!

Unfortunately, I’ve not been too well recently. My Chronic Fatigue Syndrome symptoms are raging , and as I write this, I’m on bedrest while I recover. But I’ll still try to spread as much kindness as I possibly can, and hopefully I’ll feel well enough to venture outside soon.  

If you’ve joined me in spreading a little festive kindness over the last few years, I’d like to say a huge…

Thank you. You really are amazing!

I know that the acts of kindness we do make a huge difference and help to brighten others’ day, as well as our own. I also think that particularly during these times of trouble and turmoil, it’s a beautiful way to show there is still oodles of good in the world.

I’d like to invite lovely you and yours to join me spreading a little kindness again this year.

For anyone new to my Kindness Advent Calendars, I would like to give you a big warm welcome. I’m so pleased you stopped by. I can safely say that we’re going to have a whole lot of festive fun this year. 

To recap, my Kindness Advent Calendar works just like a normal advent calendar but instead of the usual chocolate countdown, we are embracing the true spirit of Christmas by doing 24 random acts of festive kindness.

So, without further ado, here’s my…

Kindness Advent Calendar 2018:

And you can download it for free here: 

Kindness Advent Calendar 2018
Kindness Advent Calendar 2018

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download it easily from there.)

Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS

I received so much positive feedback from parents and teachers about last year’s Kindness Advent Calendar for Kids, I thought I’d do another this year.

It’s such a fun and easy way for teachers and parents to get children involved in spreading a little kindness in the lead up to Christmas, and a lovely way of showing children what a positive impact they can have on the world.

So here it is,…

Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS 2018:

And you can download it here for free: 

KIDS’ Kindness Advent Calendar 2018
KIDS’ Kindness Advent Calendar 2018

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download it easily from there.)

Non-Advent Calendars

Over the years, I’ve been asked to create a generic, non-advent Kindness Calendar for December, and include this year’s here:

Kindness Calendar – December 2018 

Kindness Calendar for KIDS – December 2018 

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download them easily from there.)

I know December is an extra busy month for most of us, and we can find ourselves rushing around trying to get everything ready in time for the Christmas holiday, so I’ve made the acts on my Kindness Calendars quick, easy and cheap (well, mostly free actually). So anyone and everyone can join in.

You may want to mix it up and swap the acts around, adapt the acts to suit you, or even change them for your own kindness acts. And don’t worry if you can’t do an act of kindness every single day, sometimes it’s just not possible as I know too well with the nature of my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome flare ups.

But even if every one of us manages to do just one kindness act on one day this month – imagine how amazing that would be!

Every single extra act of kindness counts, and together we are making the world a kinder place. So let’s get as many people as we can involved and share this with family, friends, work colleagues, classmates… and share all over social media. 🙂

And don’t forget to join me on my kindness community page ‘Spreading A Little Kindness’ on Facebook, and if you post about your kindness act, please use the hashtag #KindnessCalendar so we can all keep track of all the wonderful kindness we are sharing.

Wishing you a dazzling December and a FAB-YULE-OUS festive season, and let’s remember to be kinder to ourselves as well, we are definitely worth it!

Thank you so much for spreading a little festive kindness.

Love+hugs, Helen 💚

 

p.s. I’d really love to hear about your kindness experiences in the comments below…

BBC Radio Nottingham’s kind school visit

A few days after we launched my Kindness Advent Calendar for Kids at Edgewood Nursery and Primary School, the big-hearted folks at BBC Radio Nottingham visited to see how the children (and Sir Mr Seeley) are getting on.

Click here to listen to Part I: 

Click here to listen to Part II: 

A big thanks to presenter to the lovely Mark Dennison – and the BBC Radio Nottingham team – for his brilliant and entertaining chat with the children, and a big round of applause for the amazing trio – Rileyann, Jessica and Louie – for sharing their kindness experiences.

Finally a huge thanks to Mr Seeley and the teachers for embracing my Kindness Advent Calendar for Kids so warmly, and, of course, most importantly an ginormous THANK YOU to all the kind-hearted children of Edgewood School for your wonderful acts of kindness so far.

You really are AMAZING ☆

thank-you1

If you’re feeling inspired to join in with the Kindness Advent Calendar or the Kindness Advent Calendar for Kids, you can download them both here for free.

☆♡☆

Act of kindness #34: A kind school

Over the last year, I’ve been hearing from big-hearted teachers who’ve been using my monthly Kindness Calendars in their classrooms and saying how much the children enjoy following them. So I thought that this year I’d create a special Kindness Advent Calendar for Kids, as well as my usual one for grown ups.

A couple of weeks ago, I contacted the headteacher at my nephews’ school – Edgewood Primary and Nursery School – to see if they’d be interested in teaming up and using my calendar in the classrooms… and received a resounding YES!

WooHooo!

Then he invited me into the school to help launch this kindness initiative at their School Assembly on 1st December.

Eeeek!

I haven’t spoken about kindness in front of an audience before, not counting my radio/TV interviews, but this was to be standing in front of 300 children aged between 4 and 11 years.

And I was really hoping they wouldn’t be a tough crowd 🙂

Feeling more and more nervous as the big day approached, I can honestly say that it couldn’t have gone any better – it was absolutely brilliant and my heart is fit to burst.

growing-heart.png

Headteacher Mr Seeley’s passion and enthusiasm for the school, the children, and focusing on the gift of kindness for the month of December, shines through and the school is such a friendly and welcoming place to be.

Before Assembly began, I was treated to a tour of the school, including a walk through the classrooms with some children preparing for their Christmas Faye or writing a Christmas story, while others were rehearsing for their Christmas Performance.

And then all of a sudden, it was time: I was standing in front of 300 pairs of inquisitive eyes and it was my turn to talk.

Gulp!!

After wondering if my talk would engage the children, I was deeply heartened to see that after every single question I invited them to answer (Who likes Christmas? Who has an Advent Calendar at home? What did you get for Day 1? What is kindness to you?) a sea of hands shot up in the air, everyone eager to share their answer.

After sharing my story and introducing the Kindness Advent Calendar for Kids, the headteacher and I talked about Day 1’s Kindness Act to ‘Share this Calendar with friends to spread kindness’.

KIDS 1st Dec.jpg

This weekend, every child will go home with a copy of the weekly newsletter which includes an explanation about my Kindness Advent Calendar and has the calendar printed on the back:

Edgwood Primary School Newsletter on KACK

And again, when asked who they can share the calendar with, a sea of hands shot up to tell us they will share it with friends, cousins, parents, aunties and uncles…

How fantastic!

We then practiced for Day 2’s Kindness Act to ‘Smile all day’, and it was such a pleasure to see 300 big beautiful smiles and hear the chorus of hellos and consequent giggles.

KIDS 2nd Dec.jpg

I honestly couldn’t have been any happier and am excited to see how they find, and hopefully have fun with, the rest of the kindness acts on the calendar.

Then it was time for the week’s Achievers to come up to the stage and receive their Achiever Certificates and a round of applause from their peers and teachers alike.

This week’s theme being kindness, the children read out why they’d been awarded this prestigious accolade, such as being kind and caring to other children, being helpful, and having a big smile for everyone.

My smile couldn’t have got any bigger, nor my clapping any louder 🙂

The children then filed out of the hall to the tune of Heather Small’s Proud with the apt lyrics “What have you done today to make me feel proud.”.

Perfect.

Later that day, headteacher Mr Seeley emailed to tell me there’s a buzz going around the school about the Kindness Advent Calendar for Kids, which is just brilliant. I’m really looking forward to popping back in a couple of weeks to see how it’s all going.

And in the meantime, kindness advocates Radio Nottingham are visiting the school next week to chat to the pupils about kindness. It will be played on Mark Dennison’s morning show one day soon – I hope to post the audio here once it goes out.

Unsurprisingly, I’m now back on bed-rest with a CFS symptom flare up and need to take a few quiet days to rest, restore and recuperate from all the excitement and exertion of launching my Kindness Advent Calendars – but of course, it’s all absolutely completely worth it.

☆♡☆

If you’d like to share my Kindness Advent Calendar for Kids with your school, you can download it here for free – just scroll past the one for grown ups! And please do let me know how it goes in the comments below, I always love to hear from you…

Kindness Advent Calendar: December 2017

Hello lovelies ♡

I’m so excited to be launching this year’s Kindness Advent Calendar on World Kindness Day (Monday 13th November).

I have to be admit, I’m still amazed at the incredible response to last year’s Kindness Advent Calendar, which has been downloaded over 500,000 times.

Please forgive me for repeating, but that’s an astonishing HALF A MILLION TIMES!!

WOW!

I’m hugely grateful and excited at the thought of all the extra kindness being spread all over the world.

And it’s all thanks to lovely you, the kind folk who shared the calendar with friends, family, colleagues, on social media, and who joined in all the kindness act advent fun.

This is absolutely proof of the ripple effect of kindness and it really couldn’t have happened without you so THANK YOU.

thank-you-

☆ You really are amazing ☆

I know your acts of kindness make a huge difference and help to brighten others’ day. I also think that particularly during these times of trouble and turmoil, it’s a beautiful way to show there is still good in the world.

So I’d like to invite lovely you and yours to join me spreading a little kindness again this year.

For anyone new to my Kindness Advent Calendars, they work just like a normal advent calendar but instead of the usual chocolate countdown, we are embracing the true spirit of Christmas by doing 24 random acts of festive kindness.

Here’s my Kindness Advent Calendar for 2017:

Kindness Advent Calendar 2017 copy

And you can download it here for FREE: 

Kindness Advent Calendar – December 2017
Kindness Advent Calendar – December 2017

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download it easily from there.)

NEW Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS

This year, I wanted to add something a little extra, and after receiving lots of requests from parents and teachers alike, and seeing how much my young nephews enjoy helping me with my kindness acts, I’ve created a special Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS to follow.

WooHooo!

It’s such a fun and easy way for teachers and parents to get children involved in spreading a little kindness in the lead up to Christmas, and a lovely way of showing children what a positive impact they can have on the world.

I ran my calendar past a brilliantly talented teacher (thank you lovely Michelle) who gave me some helpful feedback. And I’m very excited to be teaming up with my nephews’ primary school, which should be oodles of fun.

Here’s my Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS for 2017:

KIDS Kindness Advent Calendar 2017.jpg

And you can download it here for FREE: 

Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS: December 2017
Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS: December 2017

If you work with children and need a non-Christmas themed Kindness Calendar, I’ve created a generic Kindness Advent Calendar for KIDS.  Please click here to download.

(Please note if you subscribe to my blog and are receiving this post by email, please click here to come through to the main site and you can download it easily from there.)

I know December is an extra busy month for most of us, and we can find ourselves rushing around trying to get everything ready in time for the Christmas holiday, so I’ve made the acts on my Kindness Calendars quick, easy and cheap (well, mostly free actually). So anyone and everyone can join in.

You may want to mix it up and swap the acts around, adapt the acts to suit you, or even create your own kindness acts. And don’t worry if you can’t do an act of kindness every single day, sometimes it’s just not possible as I know too well with the nature of my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome flare ups.

But even if every one of us manages to do just one kindness act on one day this month – imagine how amazing that would be!

Again, it would be really brilliant and deeply appreciated if you could share this with family, friends, work colleagues, classmates… and share all over social media. 🙂

Every single extra act of kindness counts, together we are making the world a kinder place. So let’s get as many people as we can involved.

And don’t forget to join me on my kindness community page ‘Spreading A Little Kindness’ on Facebook, and if you post about your kindness act, please use the hashtag #KindnessCalendar so we can all keep track of all the wonderful kindness we are sharing.

Wishing you a dazzling December and a fun festive season, and let’s remember to be kinder to ourselves as well, we are definitely worth it!

Thank you so much for spreading a little more kindness.

Love, Helen
☆♡☆

p.s. I’d love to hear about your kindness experiences in the comments below…

Media Support for my Kindness Advent Calendars:

☆ My local newspaper featured a teaser for my Kindness Advent Calendars. You can read about it here.

☆ On World Kindness Day, I spoke to the very lovely Mark Dennison live on BBC Radio Nottingham about kindness. I was a little nervous and rambled a little bit, but you can listen to it here:

☆ Fellow acts of kindness enthusiast, Travis Mayfield featured my Kindness Advent Calendar on his Seattle’s Morning TV Show Q13 Fox. You can watch the brilliant clip by clicking here.

☆♡☆

IF YOU’D PREFER A NON-CHRISTMAS VERSION, I’VE ADAPTED MY KINDNESS CALENDAR AND YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT HERE:

Kindness Calendar December 2017 – non-Christmas version
Kindness Calendar December 2017 – non-Christmas version

Act of kindness #27: Lotto luck

Day 23 of my Kindness Advent Calendar is to “buy a lottery ticket and give it to a friend, loved one or stranger”.

So this morning I bought a few lottery scratch cards and popped them in a bag along with a little chocolate bar and one of my Kindness Cards with the message: “I hope this brings you a little lottery luck! Merry Christmas.”

IMG_6237.JPG

I then randomly placed them on windscreens of cars parked in my local town.

IMG_6249.JPG

IMG_6250I really hope they bring someone a little lottery luck this Christmas.

☆♡☆

A warm and grateful heart

Being grateful for receiving kindness from big-hearted folk:

Oh boy, what a month it has been in the life of my Kindness Advent Calendar; it honestly feels like a huge ripple effect of kindness is spreading out all over the world. I’ll write more about this once I’ve got over the shock!

I also would like to acknowledge all the lovely folk who’ve recently signed up to receive my blog posts directly into your inboxes – a huge twinkly, jingle bells of a HELLO to you and I wish I could give you all a great big THANK YOU hug.

Seriously.

But for now, it’s back to today’s post…

All this excitement and activity has unfortunately – well, rather predictably – brought on my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome symptoms 🙁

I’ve been feeling utterly wiped out and unable to get out of bed for a few days, and last week I had to switch off from social media for a little while. This frustratingly meant I couldn’t respond to all the amazing blog messages and posts and tweets coming in, of which I’m seriously loving reading each and every one.

But I realised that I needed to be kinder to myself and take the time to rest, recover and recharge – my 3Rs.

And on one day last week, when I was feeling particularly rough and low and sorry for myself, I received a wonderful act of kindness. My folks weren’t home and my mum told that she was expecting a package (cough cough = a little white lie!!) and would I answer the door – which I normally wouldn’t do.

And I’m so glad I did.

Standing at the front door were two lovely staff members from my local Co-op delivering a bag of sweet festive treats.

Co-op Facebook post 2 12th Dec 16.jpg

You can see from the photo just how rough I was feeling that day, but it was such a magical surprise and I’m deeply grateful for their kindness.

My sleep has also taken a kicking and is being really rubbish, leaving me feeling more fatigued on top of my existing chronic fatigue.

Urgh!

A lovely friend suggested a massage might help, and although it’s way out of my budget, I realised that it was worth a try.

As I was trying to find an affordable practitioner through an online search (a wood-through-the-trees scenario!), I saw that I had a new message on my Facebook community page: spreading a little kindness.

It was from the big-hearted Sue Fisher, a mobile reflexologist who is doing the Kindness Advent Calendar. She saw that I lived in the same neck of the woods, and generously offered me a free session.

Seeing it as a sign, I gratefully accepted and Sue came by the following day.

She explained how she specialises in lymphatic drainage reflexology which has been shown to help people with auto-immune conditions, including CFS.

reflexology.jpeg
[image: In The Zone Reflexology]

It was pure heaven and I’m deeply grateful to Sue for her kindness. I’ve since invested in a further two sessions, and am feeling the benefits as well as it all being rather blissful.

I am so thankful for the kindness I’ve received, although I have to confess I find it so much easier to give kindness than it is to receive. Hmmmm.. a poignant lesson for me to be learning right now.

☆♡☆