"You is kind. You is smart. You is important."

In probably one of the most poignant lines in the movie, The Help, Aibileen's empowering words to Mae Mobley resonate. Inspiring in their own right, they are life-giving to a little girl starving for a kind word or gesture from her cold and distant mother.


"When Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865, he was carrying . . . a brown leather wallet containing . . .  nine newspaper clippings, including several favorable to the president and his policies," reports the Library of Congress.*


My friend Maryann shared recently that her father-in-law refers to her as "the best daughter-in-law ever." He has never said a critical word to her in her 27-year marriage.


I have a box where I keep every kind thank you note anyone's ever sent me.


Why?


Because we're never too old, important, or secure not to care what other people think about us. It's universal. It's part of our humanity.


So if words of affirmation are so important, why don't we speak them more often?

When our children do something wrong, we correct them, but when they do something right, we fail to comment, because they were supposed to do it.


I get paid to do my job, but I sure like it when a patient takes time to thank me for caring for them. One compliment or expression of thanks can carry me through a whole day of grumpy patients.


And when was the last time we thanked our husbands for going to work every day?
"Well, he's supposed to! And I work hard too; nobody thanks me," we justify.


When was the last time we told our young adult children we are proud of them?


Now that my children are out of the nest, both my mother and my mother-in-law have told my husband and me that we "did a good job raising the girls." I carry these words tucked close to my heart, especially when Satan whispers words to the contrary.


What words do you wish someone would say to you?

Go out and speak them today.





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*(http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/scsmbib:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28scsm001049%29%29)
 

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