As I write this, thoughts about giving I try to always remain conscious of the great gifts I have.  A wonderful family, many, many friends I love, a degree of financial security, rewarding work for good causes… In some ways it’s easy for me to feel like giving, because I feel I have so much.

What I always find inspiring is those who have so little and yet who walk a path of generosity and love. 

The single mother living on the financial edge, who does everything she can for her children.  And she raises three super human beings (Thank you Lucinda). 

The man who, despite losing his wife in a car accident caused by a drunk driver, who needed months of facial reconstruction, who raised two strong and lovely women on his own (Thank you Russell). 

The Zimbabwean woman with six children whose husband died of AIDS who worked relentlessly to save others from the scourge of that illness (Thank you Anatolia).

“You only have what you give. It's by spending yourself that you become rich,” writes Isabel Allende in a wonderful piece on the NPR website. 

I strongly recommend you read it.  It is a heart breaking and heartening piece about what she learned when she lost her daughter.