Again, I caution those of you not used to working with the homeless, not aware of the inner-city culture or the risks of encountering the severely mentally ill, sex offenders or sociopaths and criminals to work WITH groups and individuals who DO have that experience. Just because a person is homeless doesn’t mean they are a criminal, sex offender or sociopath, but statistically those who are chronically homeless are desperate and have issues and drives you may not recognize. I was homeless and moved among the chronically homeless and can assure you they are individuals in pain, hurting, hungry, needy and many are just people like you and me, but unless you know how to recognize an addict under the influence of crack or other drugs, or those with serious issues, don’t put yourself at risk.

Work with shelters, churches, food banks, and with those homeless individuals you know of through your local social agencies or Salvation Army. This ebook lists 101 things you can give or do for the homeless besides giving them money that can help them get off the streets, get a job, have an easier time while on the streets and regain their self-respect and confidence. I hope you’ll download it and read it and share it with your friends! Thank you!

To download click: 101GiftsForHomeless2012

Click here for a free, no register download.

CopywritingTips_Homeless

There are days I wake up and wonder how I got so lucky. They’re not all “Oprah or Dr. Phil level” famous, but they should be.

They’re just really, really, really wise people. Most of them blog and every once in a while, actually on a regular basis, they post information that rocks my world. Today one of them, Lorraine Esposito, (who I hired as my own coach last year) posted a “Tip of the Week” article today on guilt and expectations. It’s not long. It’s basic, but it launched me into my own self-examination process because it was so straightforward.

Maybe it’s just me, just the timing, just what I  needed to hear right now, but I thought it was a great post. You can read it yourself here: http://peacemaker-coach.com/Tip-of-the-Week.html.

She’s talking about how we feel guilt when we don’t meet other people’s expectations. Sound familiar? I tied myself in knots and laid in bed and cried all month from the guilt I felt over having pneumonia (out of my control) and not being able to work most of the month.

Each time I started to feel a little better I’d work, relapse and collapse. I was so frustrated. Then I said, “No more. My health is more important than work.” I may have lost some clients, but I really don’t care. I’m more important….if I don’t take care of me I’ll never be able to work. So this was SOOOOOO timely. Here’s a sample. Lorraine writes:

The Problem: Too many people live in a state of conflict. The conflict?:

Other People’s Values (expectations) vs. Their OWN Values (standards).

A few examples of conflict:

• Spending money on yourself when others expect your charity, generosity, abstinence, etc.

• Spending time on yourself when other expect sacrifice, service, help, etc.

• Saying ‘no’ when others expect you to say ‘yes’

• Needing help to satisfy personal needs–even basic ones like food, love, attention, respect–when others expect you to be a bootstrapper

I felt definite conflict when I was sick and had commitments to friends and clients. Friends (for the most part) understood and wished me well and graciously went on without me. Clients, not so much. That’s where I struggled.

I made the commitment and needed and wanted to honor it, but how to do that when I’m spending most of my day wondering whether to go the emergency room because I can barely breathe? Reading her post woke me up. I had no standards and scrambled to meet other people’s expectations without even trying to renegotiate them based on an unforeseen and unavoidable conflict.

2012 is my year to keep affirming my boundaries, but also to start creating standards and expectations! Join me. Make your own list of standards and expectations. See if it changes your life.

Some grads have experienced the callous disregard as well, including John Matco.

Dozens of Penn State fans, even adults and women, spit on John Matco, a 34-year old Penn State Alum who dared to stand up for the victims before the game Saturday. People threw beer on him, cursed him and threatened him.

The Washington Times says Matko was the target of many expletives.

“It’s about education and putting things into perspective what the situation is all about. Hopefully, the fact that both teams sat up and prayed together put that in perspective a little bit.”

What is disturbing is that many of these supporters are women, even women with children. They are carrying their hate to Twitter and beyond. Kelly Long (@Kel_Long or  longkelly10@gmail.com] had no problem attacking me and writing the publications I write for to complain about my tweets regarding Paterno. The exchange she sent was pretty one sided. Although she claims to be a law school student, she forgot there are TWO sides to every story. She left out her tweets calling me a fatass, thinking perhaps, as Joe Paterno, Mike McQueary and Penn State did, that no one would bother to look further than her claims.

She and another tweeter, @MaryMac_III seem to think that attempting to destroy my life, my business and my work with the homeless and others is the way to shut me up—much like their hero Joe Paterno and Penn State shut up Mike McQueary. I don’t shut up. Kelly Long and Mary Mac, like Paterno, McQueary, Curly and all organizations that use force and intimidation to try to make people stay silent, are why we, as a country, have failed our children and need to continue to speak out. Kelly Long is a law student and if she graduates and if she passes the bar, she’ll be part of the system that prosecutes people based on if they suck up and agree with her opinion.

As a survivor of child abuse myself I WILL NOT SHUT UP. Women like Kelly Long and Mary Mac are simply the female versions of the male domination and threat systems we see at Penn State, at The Citadel, in all branches of the US Military and in police departments around the country. We have stopped being a country of free speech and have become a country like Nazi Germany where he with the biggest stick had the right to free speech. For too long victims have kept silent. They haven’t opposed the Kelly Long’s, the Mary Macs, the Joe Paterno’s, the Penn States and others who have succeeded in shaming, threatening and abusing those who have an opinion contrary to theirs.

The privileged few, the 1 percenters, who think they can attack, threaten and abuse anyone because they have enough “F*** You” money position and power are wrong. Not only are these two women writing TED, tweeting TED and emailing, they think their entitlement to respect they haven’t earned trumps my right to employment, and to free speech and to my own opinion. IF you can’t handle the heat on Twitter then get off the service. What they fail to realize is that by trying to ensure they shut me up they’re making it more possible for me to speak out.

The reason the trend towards narcissistic youth is troubling is that this is a trend. The feeling and comfort of entitlement is NOT a one time oversight. As the investigation into Penn State’s football program continues it seems that Joe Paterno had a history of ethical violations. No wonder this one incident was no big deal. It was one in a long line of ethical lapses.

Nick Summers, a writer for The Daily Beast, goes into detail in an excellent article. He says:

As the Nittany Lions won more games, their players more often broke the law. Between 2002 and 2008, 46 Penn State players were charged with a total of 163 crimes; 27 were found guilty. The Daily Beast was not able to obtain information confirming how many of those charged were accused of sex crimes but there were at least four cases of students accused of sex crimes during that period.

The worst of the crimes of Penn State haven’t been uncovered. The stories that Sandusky was selling sexual access to children to Penn State Boosters and donors is growing. So are the number of victims. The reason Joe Paterno hired a CRIMINAL defense attorney tells many people he knows more than he’s willing to admit to. The world can only hope that the victims do get a piece of Paterno/PennState pie before the lawyers take it all.

But whatever happens, I refuse to shut up. I encourage other victims to step up, to blog, to tweet, to retweet and to object. It’s time to show the bullies they can’t bully us any more.

Joe is taking the photos and I’m putting them into some sort of format that makes them easy to see, along with quotes Joe finds personally inspiring. I hope you’ll sign up for them. The photos are amazing and I can’t wait to get down there to swim with them!

Every year I “help” someone else on my birthday and feel angry and resentful for doing it because it’s not what I wanted to do and I believed I couldn’t say “no” to my friends. I’ve been working on that. I say “No,” quite easily lately. I’ve been practicing.

This year I’m not going to cave, so don’t bother asking. You’ll just piss me off – probably for a whole year or longer, maybe forever. Send me cards, wish me well, take me out to dinner or lunch, post silly birthday greetings, sing me a song, but don’t expect anything in terms of work or help from me. I’m taking care of me all day. And I am totally fine with that. You will have to wait until Monday, because Sunday is off-limits too. I’ll be resting from all the fun I have planned for my Saturday birthday.

This should be a no brainer, but for the past half-century, it hasn’t been.

As I realize how little time we all have really, every minute I spend on others before meeting my own needs becomes like a burning thorn in my side. It’s my turn. I love helping, love being generous, love engaging with others, but just not for you and not on my birthday.

I’m going to sleep in late, watch movies, drink soda, take my dog on a long walk and maybe spoil her too – and maybe I’ll buy a small bottle of Kahlua or Peach Schnapps to toast myself with later. But I’m not going to worry about anything else. Thank you all for understanding. And if you don’t understand, that’s your problem, not mine. Happy Birthday me!

I just found out I’m on the cover of We Are All Weird, a new book by Seth Godin. Seth, if you didn’t know, is a business and marketing genius and the reason for my getting the votes I needed to win Dan Pink’s contest and to go to TED Global 2009 and speak at Oxford. He’s also the author of 13 best-selling business books. He rocks.

I’m third from the right on the top row – easier to see in the photo below. This matters to me because I’m on a book about weirdness first – so cool. And secondly and most importantly really, because I’m part of the story, part of Triiibes.com, Seth’s social media network (More about that in a minute). And, I’m there with several friends of mine from Triiibes.com. Friends like: Tom Bentley, the man with the Mark Twain tattoo. Tom is one of the most gifted writers and story tellers I know. Pat Ferdinandi, the Parrot lady – that’s her in the Parrot costume at the bottom, Bob Poole, the man with the lizard on his forehead, are all remarkable, funny people and I’m proud to call them friends and to share such a great cover as well.

I think the reason it rocks the most is not that it’s Seth’s book as much as it that I’m part of a larger story. I’m part of Triiibes.com. The cover is a part of our experience together over the past few years that is centered around Seth and triiibes.com. I don’t know of a lot of other social media groups I’m part of that were started, nurtured and encouraged by the person who started the group in order to further the participant’s lives and business, to explore what it means to be creative and a business person and to learn to share and give and help, and not just to support and further the founder’s interest.

Triiibes is for the benefit of the participants, not for Seth. He benefits from it, but that’s not the goal. I embrace triiibes because of that fact, because it’s all about people, and it’s not an excuse to sell books or speaking engagements or tickets to something. All that comes about as a result, but it’s not the intent or the purpose. And that’s the difference that matters, the difference I try to convey to my customers, the difference that highly successful people understand – that by making it all about your customer’s best interests first, you benefit too. Seth gets it. I get it. Many of those I work with get it. Fear, greed and worry about scarcity kill opportunity. Trust there will be enough and there will be. Share, give. Take care of yourself of course, but not to the extent that when you show up people wonder more about what you want, than what you have to offer.

Give. And one day you too may end up on a book cover with people with literary tattoos, wearing parrot costumes, balancing lizards on their foreheads and kissing a Rottweiler. And you’ll understand why it’s about the bonds, not the book. The book just explains them, the cover celebrates them.

If I hear it one more time I may get sick. A friend of mine sent me an email about an ABC reporter looking for someone to interview about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome today. So I emailed her and she called and we ended up talking for awhile about the thing I’m almost more passionate about than homelessness – Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia.

I have them both and have had since I was 36, although it took much longer to get the diagnosis. Doctors told me I had everything from Multiple Sclerosis (I did/do not), Lyme’s Disease (I did, but not until 10 years after the onset of symptoms and definitely related to a tick bite that left the classic bull’s eye on my back).  No one knew what it was, so failing a diagnosis, they opted for the stand by of most doctors – “It’s all in your head. You’re stressed. You’re crazy. You’re lazy. You’re depressed.”

No. I’m a journalist, a writer, an investigator. And so I dug. I questioned. I kept going to doctors and eventually a Nurse Practitioner was able to test the sore knots on my body and pronounce that I might have Fibromyalgia. Her supervising physician came in, agreed and I finally had a diagnosis. That took a tremendous weight off my shoulders since (1) I’d never heard of it before and now I had a name for what I was experiencing. That meant that other people had it too. So I was not alone. And (2), it meant I had a starting place, an anchor, a place to begin looking from. So I did.

It took awhile, but I found out that a lot of doctors believe CFS and Fibro are related to a virus. The official medical community disagrees, mostly because it’s not in their financial best interest to do so. After all, the push to sell pills and cures means more to doctors than finding answers.

Like I told the reporter, doctors want a blood test, or some proof in a repeatable diagnosis so that they can show insurance companies that treatment is (1) justified and (2) they won’t have to spend so much time with patients. They can pop in, charge $300 for 3-minutes, pop out, order a $99 blood test and then prescribe a round of expensive pills. That’s what modern medicine is all about these days.

Apparently someone came down hard on the folks who found that CFS was probably related to a virus. Because a new report came out claiming the study was bogus. Not surprised. I think it’s interesting that the blood banks still won’t let people with CFS and Fibro donate blood tho. If it is in the blood, then it can be transmitted. Which means, it’s a virus. Virus’ are too small to be seen with the equipment we have today. They replicate inside of cells and the little bastards are hard to find, harder to categorize and harder to test for. So, since science only believes in what it can see, prove and replicate, a CFS virus doesn’t exist – yet.

If doctors did what doctors used to do, which is take our histories, get to know us, and evaluate us based on a holistic view of who we were, onset, symptoms and history and treated us based on their diagnosis rather than on the results of some overworked, underpaid, undereducated lab tech somewhere, we’d be a lot better off. But that’s not economically rewarding. If doctors can move 20 patients through their office in an hour, order a test and prescribe expensive pills then the doctor, the office, the pharmaceutical company and everyone in the supply chain wins (eg makes buttloads of money). The patient, that would be me and you, loses.

So until money is no longer a factor in discovering a cure for Fibromyalgia and CFS, we’re left with a handful of doctors who do care and who do it the old fashioned way. Doctors like Jacob Teitelbaum. He’s not only a medical doctor, no quack. He had CFS and Fibro himself when he was in med school. He dropped out for a year to heal, became homeless, then went back to school and finished his degree. Now he only treats CFS and Fibro patients. And, he has trained other doctors in clinics around the country that are helping thousands of people just like me. He knows that we don’t have money to get the treatment we need because we can’t work full or even part-time in some cases. So he goes out of his way to make things affordable, and even has protocols and advice on his website (free) that people can try to see what helps.

It’s a start. In the meantime, I continue to work as I can and hope for a cure.

That’s the point of the emails as well – to get people to see there is something to be grateful for in everything around us. I consider it God’s gift to me that I get jobs like this. While looking for photos to illustrate the newsletter I found this one and it got me to thinking about the impact I’m leaving on this world. There are two kinds of impact we leave: The public persona and the private persona.

The Public Persona:

Our public footprint is the one the media and the public shows or sees. For some of us it’s front page coverage and thousands of attendees at our funeral and then the dark humor circuits among the late night talk show comedians. Then the fame fades and other than a few references on the anniversary of our death or whatever made us so well known, our name fades into obscurity until a decade or two or three later most people have no idea who we were. Our name might end up on a building, or as the name of a baseball field. And people, even if they recognize the name, like Hitler, or even Jesus Christ, often don’t really know what the person was about. They know only the image the press has perpetuated or the stereotype. You aren’t ever really known. That  feels awfully lonely to me.

Private Persona:

Then there’s the one-on-one impact. There are the lives we’ve touched, changed, inspired or comforted. An act of kindness, a bottle of cold water on a hot day, a smile, a hug, a ride to the grocery store when we don’t have a car. There’s the comfort and support, encouragement and compassion and a hand up when someone is in a deep hole they’ve dug for ourselves. There’s being there when a loved one dies, or when life gets dark. It’s the hard stuff – the learning, the day-to-day presence and encouragement. They are the hundreds of little things that mean so much, and that people remember for the rest of their lives. My high school teachers are among those. Their lessons, encouragement and laughter will be with me and part of who I am forever. It is the greatest legacy they could have left – a piece of themselves in every life they touched. Their influence continues without the media, or hype. It just is and it’s powerful.

We may not live on in infamy in the public eye, but who we are, who we were, lives on forever in the hearts of those we reach out to. Which kind of fame means more to you? Your name on a plaque on a wall at some institution, or on the front page of every website or paper your peers read? Or would you prefer your name mentioned often, in stories told round the table at Thanksgiving or Christmas, or on an anniversary or at an odd time when someone remembers something you  said or taught or shared? Me? I’d rather be known and cherished by a handful of people I impacted for good rather than a footprint in the media sand.

To tell your already panicked and frightened mind that you’re “lost” meaning to our amygdala that we’re about to die, is not helpful. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know where you’re going (car, foot, travel etc) or you can’t decide what job or career to pursue, you’re not really lost. You’re getting your bearings, you’re on an adventure. It’s going to work out.

When I was in London England for the first time in 2009, I got on a city bus by myself, having no idea where it was going or how long it would take. It was late afternoon. I just rode along enjoying the scenery and having a grand time. The bus stopped and everyone was told to get off, it was the end of the line. The bus would not be returning or going anywhere else for the day. I had no map, no idea where I was or how to get back to the hotel or even an address. I was LOST! But I reminded myself, after that first burst of panic, that I was NOT lost. I was on an adventure. I spent the next two hours navigating the bowels of the subway system and wandering the streets of London, but I had a good time and eventually found my way back to the hotel. It was an adventure and I felt deliriously happy at my ability to navigate a foreign country by myself for the first time. I know. Thousands of people do it everyday. It’s not such a big deal really, but for me, then – it was.

I recently realized I have no idea where I’m going with my life, or my business. I’m going through the motions, but I’m going in six different directions and none of them feel like fun – except for maybe my October Abduction books. So I’m regrouping, thinking and reminding myself – I’m not lost. I’m on an adventure. Are you?

I stood in the doorway breathing in the cool mist and the smell and suddenly missing the hundreds of weekends I spent camping in the rain in my life. Huddled in a tent or under a tarp with a campfire hissing and blazing only yards away, the smokey fragrance blowing in and around me, I’d curl up in a sleeping bag with a good book, or sleep (as I did most of today). Those were the best of times for sure.

Even when I was living in the van and homeless, rainy days were awesome. Even though the van leaked and I had to place plastic bags to divert the flow away from the bed and the driver’s seat, the sheer bliss of knowing I had a bed, a warm sleeping bag, a cooler with all the fixings for baloney sandwiches and bottled water, and a safe haven in the van was amazing. My animals would curl up on the bed with me while I read and listened to the sound of rain on the metal roof. Being rich is having those memories and good times. And by good times I mean being safe, warm, dry and often even fed. In today’s world, and the coming world, that is such a gift.

I hope you have a fireplace and a fire going now. Failing that, I hope you have a bed, a warm blanket or sleeping bag, and the ability to sleep through a driving rain in comfort, warmth, dryness and safety.

Anger is saying to the jerk who cuts you off in traffic, “You freaking moron!” Rage is chasing him down and running him off the road with your car, or trying to. Or it’s following him into a parking lot then beating him up as he gets out of his car. It happens every day. Rage.

On the anger spectrum, annoyance is the least extreme, anger the mid-range and rage the ultimate extreme. Rage can’t be controlled by our thoughts. Rage usually lasts until a threat is removed or the person under rage is incapacitated in some fashion. In most cases it’s when the threat is removed, or perceived to have been removed. People in a true rage are as unable to control their feelings and actions as someone on drugs because they too, literally are on drugs–hormones and chemicals their body produces in response to a severe threat.

Why? Because rage was designed to protect us. It’s a chemical reaction related to our lizard brain. It’s pure instinct and nature. When a threat to us or our loved ones is perceived, large amounts of epinephrine are released and the body reverts to a more primal instinct, and our strength can double or triple in response to an immediate threat. People can’t think clearly in this state of mind. They’re incapable of it. Nature intended it that way as a survival mechanism. The brain only processes one idea at a time and that idea is “SURVIVE.” It is motivated by emotions rather than intellectual goals, and seeks only to survive–fight or flight. Threaten harm to a child and the mother will flip into a rage and God save you if she can get her hands on you. If you believe your life is on the line, it’s very easy to slip from anger into rage.

Anger, on the other hand, we can control, to a greater extent because anger is caused by our thoughts. Seth Godin wrote about anger and creativity today. He asked:

Is your anger killing your art?

It’s rare to find a consistently creative or insightful person who is also an angry person.*

They can’t occupy the same space, and if your anger moves in, generosity and creativity often move out. It’s difficult to use revenge or animus to fuel great work.

Ironically, when you decide to teach someone a lesson they richly deserve, you often end up strangling the very source you were counting on.

(*Angry is not the same as being a jerk. For some reason, there are plenty of creative jerks–I think because they mistakenly believe that being a jerk is a useful way for some people to wrestle with their lizard brains).

I tend to agree and to disagree with him on this. For the past week or more…more really, I’ve felt a lot of anger. Being particularly fluent in sarcasm, the language of angry people, means I’m not the only one who suffers from my anger. So do those around me. I could not write. I could not communicate effectively. I did little more than sit with my anger. It’s an old anger, a childhood wound oozing its pain.

General, nebulous, “can’t put my finger on it,” anger is almost always related to old wounds. And it’s crippling. Thinking about the sexually molesting pastor of my childhood and the lives he destroyed, including my own, moves me to rage. There’s a laundry list of childhood abuses that I’ve chipped away at for years. The anger not only moves me to rage, it paralyzes my creativity. Many of my clients experience the same pain, the same inability to be creative as Seth describes. When I work with them, their anger and pain is both my anger and pain in the sense we share a history of abuse; but it is not my anger or pain in the sense that I feel it to the degree that it keeps me from helping them write about it.

I experience the same blocks they do when I write about the pain and the past, because it is my pain. That is the part I agree with Seth on. I disagree with the part where he says “It’s rare to find a consistently creative or insightful person who is also an angry person.” I think it’s more accurate to say, “It’s rare to find a consistently creative or insightful person who manages their anger well enough to utilize it in their work.”

Science has shown in SOME people anger enhances their creativity. I’ve found it to both enhance and derail mine. What I’ve learned for myself about making anger work for you rather than against you:

Feel it. Don’t try to stuff it or self-medicate it away. It’s an emotion. Let it wash through you and expend itself. Go for a walk, sit with it. Lie down and do a body scan to see where it is in your body. Acknowledge it, get to know it, try to be aware, to feel and to experience it without necessarily acting on it.

Don’t act directly on it. You can write the letter, but don’t send it. Journal it, but don’t share it with anyone but a therapist or truly safe and trusted friend. You can scream and curse at the top of your lungs in your room or car where no one else can hear you, but don’t direct it toward anyone (including pets).

Process it. Processing anger means finding a way to release or burn up the various hormones and chemicals your body releases when you’re angry. Paint. Run. Work out. Do a bunch of sit-ups. Hit a punching bag. Beat your bed with a plastic baseball bat. I have a friend with very clean rugs because when she is angry she hangs her rugs over a clothesline and beats them with an old fashioned rug beater…a lot. Helps her immensely.

Communicate it. This is controversial, but I think letting people know you’re angry about something and need your space, or need their help or understanding, can be helpful. You don’t have to scream or rant and rave. A simple, “I’ feeling really angry right now and this isn’t a good time for me to talk, go to lunch, hang out, whatever. I’d be happy to revisit your request when I’m not feeling so strongly about this other thing.”  You don’t even have to share that you’re angry, or if you do, you don’t have to share what you’re angry about, or why. Just setting a boundary about your feelings and what you need at the time is all you need.

Many people are afraid of their own anger so any mention of the word anger will frighten them and they’ll avoid you or be frightened of you. Their emotions are their responsibility, not yours (or mine), so they’re entitled to flee. But you don’t have to feel guilty or shamed or responsible for that. I sure don’t!! Don’t yell at people, but do communicate in some way. I tend to lapse into sarcasm and aggression to push people away who keep annoying me when I’ve asked them to STOP, or go away. People who continue to violate your boundaries to get their own needs met are unsafe people who you would be wise to reconsider engaging with.

Give your anger a limit, a deadline. I allowed myself a week to stew and steam and piss and moan. It’s usually just a day or a few hours, but I was majorly angry with myself and needed more time to process things. Now it’s at a manageable level and I’m writing. If you annoy me now I’ll just ignore you. It’s a boundary thing and a tactic highly approved of by my therapist and other boundary experts. If someone keeps wanting things from you, tell them no, keep telling them no, and then if they can’t respect that, ignore them. No means no. Inappropriate is inappropriate. And, boundaries are boundaries.

Now. Back to work!

I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten waffles nude, and in a bathtub, or in bed, but never on a beach. Obviously there are enough people who do that a sign is needed to warn those who aren’t expecting nude waffle eaters along a path where most people don’t eat waffles, let alone eat them nude.

If someone were going to put up a sign in your life to warn you about some unexpected thing you might run into, what would your sign say?

Mine might say, “Traditional book agents and publishers waiting to sign you to a contract for all 40 books you’re writing.” Or, it might say, “New car, won by random, dumb, blind luck.”

The point is, signs like this are to let us know (1) the unexpected CAN happen and that (2) be prepared for it, no matter how out of place it might be.

My favorite sign? The one I’m really anticipating seeing? “Beyond this month you will encounter $500,000 in sales of Bloodline. Be prepared.”

In my TED talk three years ago I talked about “Hope,” and was thrilled today to discover that there is yet another company working to keep hope alive. Jedidiah is a humanitarian-based clothing company that wants to cultivate change, one garment at a time. Their mission is to use clothing sales as a way to provide care, support and financial resources to those in need.

Their clothing line is cool, hip, young and so are the people they’re helping. Jedidiah recently teamed up with one of my favorite organizations – Stand Up For Kids. Stand Up For Kids, for those of you who don’t know, works with homeless kids across the country, providing food, shelter, supplies, transportation and education so they can stay in school, get back in school, find housing, find work, and stay alive. They literally go out into the streets, under the bridge overpasses, into abandoned buildings, culverts and wherever these kids are – to bring them help. It’s the most fantastic organization I know of. I wish I could do more, and when I am able to, I will. Anyway – I’m not the only who feels that way. Jedidiah does too.

Each season, Jedidiah partners with a distinctive and effective non-profit organization to raise money and awareness for life-changing causes. Every Jedidiah piece is creatively inspired and tied to a cause, all benefiting their non-profit organization. In the Fall of 2010 Jedidiah visited the LA, Miami, and New York StandUp For Kids chapters to see for themselves and to document the realities that homeless youth face. The visuals, thoughts, emotions and sentiments they experienced on their trip served as the inspiration behind their Fall/Holiday 2011 lines of clothing and designs. They’re giving back from their experience and you can help.

Proceeds from the Jedidiah Fall/Holiday 2011 clothing lines will be used to help fund a brand new Stand Up For Kids homeless center in New York City.

Thirteen kids A DAY, EVERY DAY die on the streets of America. Organizations like Stand Up and Jedidiah are making a difference. You can help. Buy a shirt and buy some hope. You’ve gotta wear clothes anyway. Why not make a difference with your next shirt, or bag, or pants. Check them out. Your choices are support the sweat shops and shop at Walmart and big box retail, or buy hope and shop Jedidiah.

KEEP HOPE ALIVE. Buy a shirt and tell them you love what they’re doing. Somewhere, somehow, it will make a difference in someone’s life. Don’t believe me? Watch the video.

Hell Yeah or No from Derek Sivers on Vimeo.