Lisa's Story

I asked Lisa if she wouldn’t mind sharing her story with you in this Blog posting. Her story is both inspirational and universal. It is a story of awareness, overcoming fear and realizing great potential. It is a story of one woman looking for a way to help others and in doing so, connecting to her greatest source of wisdom. It is also the story of one woman’s experience of Traveling Postcards.

It is my hope that through Traveling Postcards women will find their voice and stand together with small gestures from their hearts and hands, and offer healing and empowerment to women all over the world. Thank you Lisa for your bravery and for your commitment to serving women through such a profound and personal story.

“You asked if I would share my story with others because you thought my story might help them. Yes, I am happy to serve others in that way.

As I mentioned to you during our conversation, I had been looking for some type of community service to get involved in for some time now. However I was having difficulty figuring out what to do. For some reason, I thought I had to do something huge and it had to have a major impact on my community or the world. This thought then made me think that what had to be done was too big, too overwhelming for me to do, and that I would just be paralyzed with fear and abandon the idea. Thus, I never got involved in anything at all.

I’m not sure how I found Traveling Postcards online but suffice it to say, I believe it’s God’s will. The quotation by Mother Teresa that you have posted on your home page “In this life we cannot do great things; we can only do small things with great love.” resonated with me. In fact it was an “Aha moment” for me. What a powerful realization! Doing something very small with great love and how great the impact of that small deed could be.

Despite the fact that I really wanted to make the postcard, it took me some time to actually make one. My self-doubt, perfectionism, fear of not being good enough prevented me from making the card. I thought for weeks about the card…what it should look like, how I would decorate it, what it should say. I thought about all the supplies that I would get to make the card. I kept looking at the cards you had posted on the website to get ideas. The more I looked at those cards , the more discouraged I got and thought any card that I made would not be as beautiful or wouldn’t have a good enough message.

Then one day, at my ladies book club meeting, we got to discussing how we wished we could help other women around the world and the subject about the women in the Congo and the atrocities they were experiencing came up. Everyone kept on saying what can we do? So I mentioned Traveling Postcards to my group. I shared with them that each one of them could make a postcard with a message of love, hope and encouragement to be sent to the City of Joy which was being built for the women of the Congo. My sharing this really touched a couple of my friends who emailed me the next morning telling me how my passionate share the evening before was inspiring and that they appreciated it. These messages of love and support from my friends somehow gave me the courage to make my first postcard. I just used whatever I could find around the house and made it. The poem I wrote was something I had written when I first thought about making the postcard. It came straight from my heart full of great love.

When I looked at the postcard I made , I started to criticize myself and started the whole process of obsessing about how it wasn’t good enough. I knew that if I didn’t mail it right away, I would end up ripping it up. So before I could change my mind, I sent it off to you. Mailing that first postcard to you was one of the most difficult things I had to do. A few days later , I went on your website and saw my postcard and the note I sent with it posted on your blog. Wow! That was an amazing moment for me. I t made me cry. My postcard looked so lovely and the message on it very touching. It made me feel so good about myself.

You asked me why I made the card, what compelled me to make it despite my fears, my lack of self worth, my perfectionism. I made it because I wanted to be of service. That desire superseded my fears. I realized that even if it was something very small, even if it was for only one person, I wanted to be of service. Something I forgot to tell you about is that the words of encouragement from my girlfriends also catalyzed my intention into action. Kind loving words are so powerful.

The most amazing thing about making the postcard is that I gained so much by serving another. I felt empowered. I gained self-worth. I created something beautiful for someone and put a lot of love into it. Hopefully it would diminish some of her pain and give her hope knowing another cared about her. I learned an important lesson when I put that card in the mail. I learned to trust and let go. I had to trust that the card was going to be good enough and had to let go of my fears. “