Stories of Kindness from Around the World

I went to my friend's going away party last night and met a lady who was talking about how she's at a point in her life where she doesn't like people too much, how she just wants to move to an island and be away from people.

And, I get why she feels that way, sometimes. The same age as me, she talked about how she has this expectation anymore that whoever she interacts with, they're just going to hurt her and she's sick of it and she just wants to isolate herself from people.

I know it has as much to do with trusting ourselves to take care of ourselves as it does in learning to trust other people, but I didn't want to tell her what to do. We're all on our own journeys and have our own paths to learn the lessons we're here to learn. But, I wanted to validate her feelings as best as I could, to make her feel heard and safe.
So, I listened. I shared I have had in the past similar problems with setting boundaries.

But, that's the extent of what I said, I really wanted to listen, to help her feel safe in that limited time period.It was hard not to just fall into her line of thinking and I was holding strong that there's SOME good people out there, lol... I mean, come on! There's KindSpring!!!!!! ;)
But, you know how that can get a little contagious sometimes....

At the end of the night, when we were all saying good-bye, she comes up to me and she thanks me. I was a little perplexed, like why? But, I said it was good to meet her, because it was. And, she said to me," you know, people don't usually listen and aren't as warm as you."
And, I was thankful that for a moment maybe, just maybe, I helped rope another one back.