Editor’s note: This article was first published in December 2014. Its references to something that “started in April 2010”, to “recent months” and to “this Christmas” refer to December 2014.
I’m not especially fond of Christmas (in case anyone hasn’t noticed yet), although, as the face of this blog, I always make an effort to put out some kind of encouraging message at this time of year, which in any case is no different from what we do all year round.
But this time I won’t have to try very hard, because when I opened my email yesterday afternoon I found a message from someone that moved me, even though I’m not someone who, at this stage, is easily moved or shaken.
I started this blog in April 2010. Millions of people have passed through it, and we have received thousands of emails about all kinds of questions. In recent months it has become practically impossible to answer them all, but we do what we can to try.
In 2012 I received an email from a young woman in Argentina who briefly told me her story.
She had lost her parents in an accident years before, leaving her and her younger brother orphaned, so she was living with her aunt and uncle, a very humble working-class family, in a somewhat troubled area of Argentina.
By a twist of fate (or of Google), one day she landed on our website, on one of those articles where we talk about leaving your comfort zone and taking risks to change your life.
In her email she explained that if she didn’t get out of the area where she lived, her future and her brother’s would be no different from that of other young people in the neighbourhood, but she was also afraid of trying to change that situation.
I asked her what she really wanted to do and achieve; I asked her what her short-term and long-term goals were.
She replied that she wanted to get out of there and get her brother out of that area, and her aunt and uncle too, who for years had been like parents to her. Her dream, her long-term goal, was to go to the United States to work in marketing or advertising, a truly difficult goal for a Hispanic woman. That was her professional dream, but it was a dream she was willing to sacrifice if it meant getting her brother out of that place and giving him a chance at a future.
After a series of emails back and forth, the last time I heard from her was an email that ended like this:
“I’m going to take the risk. I feel I have to take the risk. Thank you so much for all your advice. I’ll keep you posted on how this change I want to make goes, and when I make it, I’ll let you know.”
The thing is, many people have told me they would keep me posted on how they got on, and then I never heard from them again. And that is exactly what happened with this young woman. At least, I thought that was what had happened.
My inbox kept filling up with messages from people, spam, offers, proposals and so on.
Every now and then I received photos of a young woman who I thought had got the wrong address, or had at least added me to some mailing list. But it was always the same person in the photos: in the middle of Manhattan, under the famous Wall Street sign, behind Wall Street’s symbolic bull, and in New York’s famous park.
I received photos of her smiling in her McDonald’s uniform just after finishing work, and later a step up in her career, with a job at a Starbucks. But they were only photos; there was no message with them.
Yesterday, when I opened my email, I saw a message with the subject line “Thank you!! I did it”. When I opened it, I found the same young woman from the photos I had been receiving all this time, and this time she wasn’t wearing a McDonald’s or Starbucks uniform. She was in a suit, at a company dinner with her boss and colleagues from a New York advertising agency.
So I filtered by her email address and started going through all the emails from that unknown young woman, from oldest to newest, and now her photos made sense to me.
Those 12 photos in total trace one person’s change of life.
In the last photo she appears with her brother and her aunt and uncle in her New York apartment, and in the message she says thank you. This will be a special Christmas for her, because she has finally been able to bring her family to the United States, and they can all be together for Christmas in a different setting.
Her brother has just started university, and she has a promising career at this advertising agency.
She says it hasn’t been easy; in fact, she says it has been really hard, having had to juggle several jobs to look after her brother, but the effort has been worth it. And she knows it when she sees the satisfaction on her aunt and uncle’s faces and is able to look after them today, just as they looked after her and her brother when they lost their parents.
She ends the email with one sentence: “I was very afraid I wouldn’t make it, but thanks to one of your articles, I started asking myself… what if I do make it?”
Without a doubt, this email is probably the best present I’ve had this Christmas, although I have to admit it almost brought tears to my eyes (but let’s keep that between ourselves).
And that’s what dreams are for: to fight for them.
Perhaps this is my way of saying “Merry Christmas” to everyone this year, and thank you so much for your words, for your stories and for being there. Many of you are a source of inspiration for me, too.
Featured image: Shannon McGee, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
