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Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen are the #1 New York Times and USA Today best-selling authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

Patty Aubery and Nancy Mitchell Autio are the coauthors of numerous Chicken Soup for the Soul books.

LeAnn Thieman, has been a nurse for thirty-two years. She is a professional speaker and the coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul and Chicken Soup for the Caregiver's Soul.

Amanda
"It is the very essence of love, of nobleness, of greatness, to be willing to suffer for the good of others."
-Spence

She looks like all the rest of them on the volleyball court with her gold number “5” on the purple jersey. Tall, blonde, with incredible blue eyes and a slim athletic build, my fifteen-year-old daughter Amanda, the kid who gets good grades and works her tail off at everything she does, could easily be the cover girl for any teen magazine. My wife, Jackie, and I watch in amazement as she dives for another dig on the court, slides across the floor headfirst until she reaches the ball and sends it flying back over the net as the crowd claps its approval. As the coach calls time-out and the girls hurry to the sidelines, Amanda uses her jersey to wipe her face, like any other kid, but at that moment you can see the scar that runs down the right side of her abdomen and across her belly. She is not like all the rest of them. She has my kidney inside her.

As they huddle off-court my mind drifts back to September 20, 1988, and the little girl who came into our lives. “Bubs” was her nickname, short for “Bubba Girl,” a name tagged by Jackie’s sister Kim when she first saw the ten-pound, two-ounce infant. At first everything was normal with Amanda, but a few months into her life she developed searing fevers and every visit to the doctor left us more confused. Still, Amanda’s toothless grin and shining blue eyes comforted us. Even after throwing up in the doctor’s office she would raise her head and smile as if to say, “Don’t worry, be happy!” Her joy was contagious but our fear was enormous.

Shortly after her first birthday Amanda was diagnosed with kidney reflux, a common condition that often reverses itself but without treatment can be very harmful. Her doctors decided, with our approval, to perform a simple outpatient procedure to correct the problem. Surgery was scheduled just before Amanda’s fifth birthday. Not long before we were to go to the hospital, the phone rang.

It was Dr. Kevin Ghandi, Amanda’s nephrologist, with some shocking news. “John, X-rays show that Amanda’s right kidney is toxic and making her sick. It has to be removed.” The news literally knocked us to our knees. How could this be?

The night before surgery, with Amanda between us in bed, we explained what would happen tomorrow. Amanda listened quietly and simply, smiled, then whispered, “Do I get ice cream when it’s all over?” Jackie and I looked at each other, wishing it could be that simple, and held her close.

We watched Amanda ride into the operating room, sitting up, with her trusted friend Teddy at her side. The gifted hands of “Dr. Kevin” removed Amanda’s ailing organ and took care of the reimplantation of her ureter into the bladder. Everything looked good but Amanda’s optimistic prognosis came with a warning: someday, she would need a transplant. Someday seemed very far away as Amanda held her own, leaving the doctors scratching their heads about how she was able to do so well with only 20 percent of one kidney functioning. We never told them our secret. Each night before Amanda went to bed and every morning when she woke up, I would ask her a very important question: “Bubs, what are we going to be today?”

She would answer, “Positive, and my kidney is getting better.” This became a ritual for us, a powerful bridge between the mind and body. Soon “better” became “perfect” and “awesome” and “incredible.” Her strength of spirit displayed itself in her physical condition.

Eight years passed. As Amanda’s body changed, the little kidney grew tired and “someday” was fast approaching. Factors of age and relationship made me the best organ donor candidate and the doctors ordered more tests. I held my breath and a small voice inside reminded me of my grandfather’s death from polycystic kidney disease— the same disease that would eventually lead to my father’s death. My sister did not have it and I had never been tested. I prayed and thought of Amanda’s smiling face. Jackie and I sat with the ultrasound tech in the darkness as she slid the wand over my kidneys searching for any cysts. She said, “I’m not really supposed to tell you guys, but I see two healthy kidneys in there.”

I knew then that a perfect plan was in place and that everything would be all right. It was the closest thing to a miracle I had ever known.

“Someday” turned out to be July 18, 2002. Amanda and I were wheeled into operating rooms at Children’s Hospital at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. My healthy vital organ was removed and a world-renowned surgeon, Dr. Hans Sollinger, delicately placed it in my daughter’s body. It began making urine immediately! For the first time in her young life, Amanda had a healthy kidney!

When I awoke after surgery, the nurse placed her hand on my chest and said, “Amanda is down at the other end of the room and is doing great. Is there anything you want me to tell her?”

My throat raw from the breathing tube, I croaked two words, something she would understand, “Hubba-Bubba,” my usual corny greeting to her. With tears in her eyes the nurse delivered the unusual message and Amanda, with eyes closed, did what she has always done. She smiled.

As fathers we always hope to leave a piece of ourselves with our children. For Amanda and me the bond goes far beyond the physical into a spiritual trust, a feeling for me that some agreement from long ago has been fulfilled. It is a rare thing to give life to your child not once, but twice.

Two years have passed since the procedure, and as I watch her head back out onto the court. she glances my way and
gives me a big smile and a “thumbs-up.” I push back the tears and smile back. I am her father, but she is my hero.

- John St. Augustine







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Chicken Soup for the Christian Woman's Soul: Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit [Paperback] review


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Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen are co-founders of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Amy Newmark is publisher and editor-in-chief of Chicken Soup for the Soul.






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Chicken Soup for the Single Parent's Soul: Stories of Hope, Healing and Humor (Chicken Soup for the Soul) [Paperback] review


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Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen are the #1 New York Times and USA Today best-selling authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

Laurie Hartman has been a single parent for nine years, raising one terrific son who is now 15. Laurie lives in Southern California.

Nancy Vogl is the single mother of three teenage daughters. Formerly a real estate professional, Nancy created a career for herself in the speaking industry, working with many of America's top speakers, authors and celebrities.

Come Back Home

All of us, at certain moments of our lives, need to take advice and receive help from other people.
~ Alexis Carrel

Finally, I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t making it on my own as a single parent with a four-year-old son and a thirteen-month-old daughter. Reluctantly, I had written my parents asking if I could move in with them until I could find a teaching position and manage on my own. I knew it would not be an easy decision for them to make. Living in a small town, my mother had always worried about “what people would think.”

Her response came more quickly than I had expected. As I held her unopened letter, I wondered if the rapid reply was good news or bad. With careful concern, I tore open the end of the envelope. Her typewritten letter was folded in the formal standard she had learned as a secretary after graduating from high school. It read:

Dear Linda,
You must quit beating up on yourself and feeling so ashamed over needing to move back home with the children because of your divorce. I want you to know that you are not the first woman in our family to be a single parent and fall on hard times. I hope you will find courage and take pride in the woman I am going to tell you about.

Your great-great-grandmother, Hannah Lappin, headed west in a prairie schooner with her farmer husband and three small children: a boy, six; a girl, two, and an infant son. They settled in a secluded section of Missouri. After five years of her husband’s tremendous effort clearing timber, rumors circulated that land, including their claim, was in litigation. Days of anxiety followed, and her husband’s health began to fail. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and his strength diminished steadily. They lost their farm. They made the difficult decision to make the four-hundred-mile trip back to southern Illinois to her family. There was nothing about this trip that held any attraction for a woman with three children and an invalid husband in the early spring of 1876. On many days, he was too sick to travel. At night, he would sleep outside under the wagon.

Inevitably he died, and left his family among strangers in the hill country of Missouri.

He was buried along the trail under a pile of stones. Their eleven-year-old son took the reins of the wagon and skillfully drove the team through the ten-mile-wide city of St. Louis and across the big river, still a hundred miles from their family.
Hannah’s problems were further complicated by her failing eyesight and the awareness that she was several months pregnant. Shortly after arriving at her Uncle David’s home, she gave birth to twin boys. Refusing charity from the state, she took in washing. Making light of her blindness, she promised people, “The stains may still be in the clothes, but I will get the stink out.” Her great poverty and lack of comfort was felt by her orphaned children, but it was no match for her unwavering faith in God and her ability to give thanks in all things. The three youngest sons became ministers. The oldest son returned to the West to build railroads across Kansas to Denver. Ida, her daughter, after ten years of wedded life, was left a widow with four small children. The example of her mother’s faith and determination inspired her, knowing her mother’s burden had been a hundred times heavier.

Linda, did you not realize that World War II made me a single parent while Daddy was overseas for two years? I had to go back to live with my parents on their farm, miles from town and friends. But it was such a blessing in disguise because Grandma was willing to rock you when you had constant earaches, and I was able to help her with her household chores. Your daddy sent us ration books, so I could get sugar and shoes and gasoline to supplement my folks’ needs.

Now that you understand that you were not the first woman in our family to be a single parent, please come back home knowing that your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, sisters and cousins are here to be family for you. With the rich heritage of women who have found a way to give their children a wonderful future, in spite of hardships, you will be in very good company.

Come back home as soon as possible.
Love always,
Mother

Linda H. Puckett
©2005. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Chicken Soup for the Single Parent's Soul Soul® by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Laurie Hartman & Nancy Vogl






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Chicken Soup for the Soul: Answered Prayers: 101 Stories of Hope, Miracles, Faith, Divine Intervention, and the Power of Prayer [Paperback] review


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Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen are co-founders of Chicken Soup for the Soul.
LeAnn Thieman is coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Living Catholic Faith, and Chicken Soup for the Soul: A Book of Miracles.







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Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, have dedicated their lives to the personal and professional growth of others.

An Act of Kindness for a Broken Heart
I am only one. But still, I am one. I cannot do everything,
but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Edward Everett Hale
My husband, Hanoch, and I wrote a book Acts of Kindness: How to Create a Kindness Revolution, which has generated much interest across America. This story was shared with us by an anonymous caller during a radio talk show in Chicago.

"Hi, Mommy, what are you doing?" asked Susie.

"I'm making a casserole for Mrs. Smith next door," said her mother.

"Why?" asked Susie, who was only six years old.

"Because Mrs. Smith is very sad; she lost her daughter and she has a broken heart. We need to take care of her for a little while."

"Why, Mommy?"

"You see, Susie, when someone is very, very sad, they have trouble doing the little things like making dinner or other chores. Because we're part of a community and Mrs. Smith is our neighbor, we need to do some things to help her. Mrs. Smith won't ever be able to talk with her daughter or hug her or do all those wonderful things that mommies and daughters do together. You are a very smart girl, Susie; maybe you'll think of some way to help take care of Mrs. Smith."

Susie thought seriously about this challenge and how she could do her part in caring for Mrs. Smith. A few minutes later, Susie knocked on her door. After a few moments Mrs. Smith answered the knock with a "Hi, Susie."

Susie noticed that Mrs. Smith didn't have that familiar musical quality about her voice when she greeted someone.

Mrs. Smith also looked as though she might have been crying because her eyes were watery and swollen."What can I do for you, Susie?" asked Mrs. Smith.

"My mommy says that you lost your daughter and you're very, very sad with a broken heart." Susie held her hand out shyly. In it was a Band-Aid. "This is for your broken heart." Mrs. Smith gasped, choking back her tears. She knelt down and hugged Susie. Through her tears she said, "Thank you, darling girl, this will help a lot."

Mrs. Smith accepted Susie's act of kindness and took it one step further. She purchased a small key ring with a plexiglass picture frame -- the ones designed to carry keys and proudly display a family portrait at the same time. Mrs. Smith placed Susie's Band-Aid in the frame to remind herself to heal a little every time she sees it. She wisely knows that healing takes time and support. It has become her symbol for healing, while not forgetting the joy and love she experienced with her daughter.

Meladee McCarty
¬ 1994 Meladee McCarty

All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of Health Communications, Inc. from A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul.






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Chicken Soup for the Soul: Say Goodbye to Back Pain!: How to Handle Flare-Ups, Injuries, and Everyday Back Health [Paperback] review


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Dr. Julie Silver is a Harvard Medical School professor and expert in physical medicine and rehabilitation, and chief editor at Harvard Health Publications.






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Chicken Soup for the Soul: Boost Your Brain Power!: You Can Improve and Energize Your Brain at Any Age [Paperback] review


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Dr. Marie Pasinski is a Harvard Medical School neurologist, writer, and speaker, specializing in brain-healthy lifestyles. Liz Neporent is an author and fitness expert.






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Chicken Soup for the African American Woman's Soul (Chicken Soup for the Soul) [Paperback] review


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Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen are the #1 New York Times and USA Today best-selling authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. They are professional speakers who have dedicated their lives to enhancing the personal and professional development of others.

Lisa Nichols, coauthor of Chicken Soup for the African American Soul, is a professional speaker and founder of Motivating the Teen Spirit, LLC, an outreach group for disadvantaged youth. She is recipient of the 2003 Trail Blazers Award, Lego Land Heart of Learning Award, and the Emotional Literacy Award. She lives in Michigan, but spends much of the year in Southern California.

Legacy

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see—or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.
- Alice Walker

Somehow, it just didn't feel right. Maybe it was the way that I was brought up, but it was hard for me to say it. Although I felt blessed and honored to have the opportunity, I just had a hard time saying aloud that I was "a graduate student at Harvard University." After all, I know good and well that I'm just a country girl from Sweetwater, Tennessee, who never saw herself as the Ivy League type, but what impression did that title give people who didn't know me?

I was not alone in this dilemma. Many of my black and Latino colleagues in the Graduate School of Education felt the same way. Several of us had to admit that when we told people we were going to graduate school and they asked where, we answered evasively, "Uh, Boston." It wasn't that we were embarrassed about being smart or weren't proud to be there; it was just that the perception people have of "Hah-vahd," conjured up images of privilege and snobbery. Many of us were first–generation college graduates from lower to middle-class families, and most of us were there because we wanted to give back something of educational value to the underserved students of color in America's schools. We actually discussed more than once whether going to Harvard was an asset or liability when our goal was to return to the neighborhoods we came from, "keep it real," and be taken seriously by regular folks. Would we build a "barrier of bourgeoisie" by having a Harvard degree?

Very quickly it was June and graduation day arrived. An incredibly rich year of reading, writing and discussing educational issues had flown by, and I was standing outside in a processional line with my dorm mates and new friends-so-close-we-were-almost-family from the Black Student Union. I sat dazed in my cap and gown on the same lawn where I'd seen Nelson Mandela receive an honorary degree back in September. I sat in a row of brown faces on the lawn with its giant oak trees that had been there since 1636 and tried to comprehend what in the world I was doing there. While the platform dignitaries waxed eloquent, it felt surreal. I snapped back to reality when it was Hazel's turn to take the platform.

Hazel Trice Edney, graduating from the Kennedy School of Government, was my friend from the dorm and one of the sharpest sisters I have ever met. She had won the speech contest and was believed to be the first African American woman ever to give the graduate student address at a Harvard graduation. Hazel from Louisa, Virginia, who had grown up in a home with no indoor plumbing and became a single welfare mother at age fifteen, had managed to earn her college degree and risen through journalism in the black press, covering politicians like Governor L. Douglas Wilder. She would soon start a Congressional fellowship in Washington, D.C., in the office of Senator Edward Kennedy. Her delivery of the speech was flawless, and we were all proud to know her.

Suddenly, listening to Hazel, proudly watching her represent all of us, it hit me. This wasn't about me. I was there as a representative. I looked up into the branches of the centuries-old trees and thought about what they would have looked like back in 1636. I thought about where my ancestors would have been in 1636 . . . 1736 . . . 1836 . . . even 1936, and how remote the possibility seemed that any of their daughters would ever be at Harvard. I thought about Grandma Mildred, valedictorian of her Cook High class with her career options so limited. No, this degree was not about me at all. This was about standing on the shoulders of my black grandmothers who scrubbed floors and cared for babies—both theirs and others'. Black women whose potential went untapped and whose intelligence was so long ignored. Women whose great minds could have been idle, except they rerouted genius, pouring it into rearing the next generation. This degree was for my grandma, who was a farmer's wife and a housekeeper, but never just that, like so many black women seen only as the shadow domestic by the outside world but who stood out as pillars of dignity in their own communities. This degree was dedicated to a woman who had to sacrifice many of her personal dreams as a young woman, but made sure all eight of her children had a respect for education and would ascend to the level of their own potential. It was dedicated to a woman who passed on heritage to her numerous grandchildren with old Ebony and Jet magazines, her gardens and recipes, family stories and photo albums. I was here because she could not be, but had the self-respect and insight to pass something significant on to her offspring.

Sometimes I still have a hard time knowing just what to say when people ask me about graduate school, but right there in Harvard Yard, I made my peace with it. Grandma Mildred didn't know it, but when I walked across that stage, I did not just get my own degree. I held in my hands her honorary degree in motherwit, holistic medicine, childhood development, home economics, culinary arts and botany earned by life experience. That degree was about stepping up to accept my responsibility to follow in her footsteps and pass something on. Thank you, Grandma, for your legacy.

-Jerilyn Upton Sanders







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Chicken Soup from the Soul of Hawaii: Stories of Aloha to Create Paradise Wherever You Are [Paperback] review


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Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen are the #1 New York Times and USA Today best-selling authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

Sharon Linnea is the author of the biography Princess Kaiulani: Hope of a Nation, Heart of a People, which won Bookselling This Week's "Pick of the Lists" (ABA) and the New York Public Library's Books for the Teen Age List and many others. Linnea's other books include Raoul Wallenberg: The Man Who Stopped Death and America's Famous and Historic Trees, with noted arborist Jeff Meyer, with a PBS series of the same name. She is the head writer for the New Morning show on the Hallmark Channel, a frequent speaker at writer's conferences and lives in Warwick, New York.

Robin Stephens Rohr is an author, publisher and photographer. She coauthored the best-seller The Powerstones-Letters to a Goddess, and was featured on Fox network's Encounters. She is on the advisory committee for the Naupaka Award, sponsored by the Waikoloa Foundation, whose mission is to perpetuate Hawaiian culture and the Hawaiian environment, and to support educational and leadership programs for native Hawaiian people. She lives in Hawai'i.

Strangers in Paradise
When you live in Boston, Massachusetts, and it's February, the thought of visiting Hawaii can defrost you. Over and over again, like a multi-sensory mantra, I'd close my eyes and conjure up pictures and sounds and soft feelings about a place far away . . . off the edge of some maps. Palm trees came to mind, with waving fronds like ballerina arms, and teal water washing over whole-wheat sand. There would be big red friendly hibiscus and smiling people.

And then I'd bolt awake from my tropical meditation. The soothing images of Hawaii would be repainted instantly with the scene right in front of me: packing tape and cardboard boxes. My husband and I were two days away from moving to Hawaii and leaving New England for good. Good as in forever, not good as in goody.
We were leaving our home, our friends, our families and two jobs, for one job and the hope that it would all work out. I was counting on what they called the "aloha spirit"ùthe kindness of the Hawaiian peopleùwhich I had read about. I just hoped the aloha spirit was a real thing, not the invention of a gifted travel writer or the Hawaii Visitors Bureau.

If only I was as thrilled about moving to Hawaii as everyone else was on my behalf. "Paradise, wow! You're so lucky!" they all said when they heard about my husband's new job. Coworkers, friends, even our families seemed to be more fixated on sun and surf than on missing us. Well, maybe not our families, but they, too, were pretty excited about the prospect of a free place to stay. I think Hawaii has a hypnotic attraction, even for those who've never been there.

I was scared of moving to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. To an island that I couldn't drive off of. To a place that is closer to Manila than Manhattan.

Yes, Hawaii would be warm, but sunshine alone is no elixir for happiness. If it was, there would be no suicides in summer. I would need more than good weather: I would need friends and a job; I would need to learn my way around and figure out how to pronounce all of those vowel-filled mouthfuls.

By the time our plane touched down, thirteen hours after leaving, it was 12:30 a.m. in Boston. I later learned that the thunder, wind and heavy rain that greeted us upon our arrival at the Honolulu International Airport is something called a Kona storm. The winds change their usual direction and dump a nasty bit of weather in their confusion. The rain was actually pouring sideways, in horizontal sheets. They say it doesn't happen often. And my feelings were hurt that it happened to us.
When morning finally found us at our new address, the sun was shining. Not just shining; it was pouring brightness into each room, like it was making up for last night's outburst. I walked from our unfamiliar bedroom to our kitchen to our living room and saw them all for the first time with daytime eyes. Our landlords, Mr. and Mrs. Higuchi, had kindly left a futon for us to use until our stuff arrived. I thought the fridge would be as empty as the rest of the little house but opened it anyway and found fresh banana muffins and guava juice inside. We enjoyed that first breakfast on our futon-cum-couch-cum-dining room table.

At the front door, I kissed my husband for longer than usual and wished him good luck at his first day of work; he wished me good luck, too. Down at my feet I was surprised to find a bouquet of long-stem red ginger, tied with raffia, and a note which read, "Aloha, friends." It was signed, "The Kalanis, next door."

From the phone in the otherwise empty living room, I dialed information and thought I had gotten a wrong number when a real person answered. "Aloha. Thank you for calling GTE Hawaiian Tel. This is Leilani. How may I help you?"

"Oh, Leilani, I need a lot of help!" I said.

After she gladly gave me the number of the Kalanis, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the closest bank, Leilani asked if there was anything else she could help me with. "Yes, Leilani," I said, "Could you be my best friend?"

Leilani didn't end up becoming my best friend, but she did take the time to give me explicit directions to the grocery store, the recommendation of a woman who cuts hair for $20, an explanation of mauka and makai-and her home number, in case I had any other questions!

I had a lot of questions for Leilani. Ones I'd never bother her with. But I realized, by the end of that first morning, that one of my questions had already been answered. Hawaii was filled with strangers who could be my friends. And it wasn't the sunshine alone that makes Hawaii feel warm.

Jana Wolff

¬2003. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Chicken Soup from the Soul of Hawaii by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Sharon Linnea, Robin Stephens Rohr. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442.







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