Day 518 Most Amazing Email I Have Ever Read

I wanted to start including some special written stories and thoughts that I have been wanting to write about over the years. I wanted it to be about hope and helping those deal with the difficulties in life. Here is an example of one of the most amazing emails I have read online. It was in a response to a very popular youtube vidoes- "the Hug campaign." Below is th eletter the video will follow.

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Date: 2009/8/6
Subject: I know you don’t know me, But…
To: juan@juanmann.com

Juan-

Your campaign has changed a lot of people’s worlds and has lit a fire in so many people’s heart; including mine.

Although I have never been hugged by you personally, I can still feel the warmth in my heart that has been inspired by you.

My life and how you changed it:
Growing up for me was very difficult. My mother and my father were drug addicts trying to raise a family. The only memories I have from my early childhood are dark. My mother would start her day off using, and same for my father, and trying to remember what happened the day before. My mother was very abusive to my father and I didn’t know anything different. I learned 911 before I could spell my own name, tie my shoes, or blow a bubble. I had to learn quickly what to do when situations got bad; take my little sister in her room and tuck her in, sneak into the kitchen, dial those three number’s and just leave the phone in the living room and go back to be with my little sister. I had to expeirence my mother stabbing my father, throwing her car keys into my dad’s eye, and watch my dad just lay there bloody and helpless.

One day, my father just picked my sister and me up from daycare, and we were pulling into the driveway… My mother’s car was still on and the front door was wide open. My dad rushed inside to find blood all over the walls and my mother sitting in the corner crying. She had tryed to commit suicide. After she was “okay”, she left. Two weeks later, my father had been served with divorce papers. He immdiatly called my mom’s friend’s house and asked to speak to my mother. She was drunk, spun, and coked out… My father asked her to come say her good byes to the family, and that’s the last time I ever saw her.

In 2006, 10 years later… My father had quit doing hard core drugs, but remained a pot head and a drunk, but he got me started in all that mess.
My dad, sister, my best friend and I were at a theme park close to home when my dad got a phone call from a strange number. They verifyed his name and told him they needed him to identify a body that had been found via emailed pictures. My dad didn’t tell us what was going on and made us rush home. He ran to the computer and broke down crying. It was my mother.
It turns out that when my mother left, she became a stripper and moved to Tennessee, where she later became a prostitute…. She was at a party at near a lake with her “friends”. She passed out from alcohol poisening when someone shot her up 3times beyond the lethal limit of cocaine. She died instantly and everyone left her there only to be found a month later. Her body was so far gone that she remained a “Jane Doe” for another month. The only way anyone could identify her was by her tattoo of my father’s name.

Since then, I have struggled with bi-polar disorder, severe anxiety, post dramatic stress disorder, and a very bad substance abuse problem. I hadn’t really smiled since the day at the theme park. I was begining to believe that happieness was only in my dreams. That is until I saw the Free Hugs campaigne. I saw the sparkel in the eyes of the people getting hugs, and I began to feel this overwhelming sensation of pure happieness rush in me.

I am now a year sober, in my first year of college, and an active “member” of the free hugs campaigne. And I finally know what I want to do with my life, I want to send that same overwhelming feeling of joy to other’s that are going through hard times, and as I help them, I am helping myself discover what I once thought was only in my dreams. I thank you for helping me smile again… There is not a big enough way to ever repay you for saving my heart so I could save other’s. You are truely amazing.

hug,
X.



God Bless
Dr.Mike

P.s Do something positive Today. Tell someone you believe in them. Tell them not to give up and to keep fighting for the good things in life...