Episode: 49 - "58 Acts of Kindness" with Beverly King

Beverly King survived the Las Vegas shooting which left 58 fellow concert goers dead and 851 injured. She's doing 58 acts of kindness each day in remembrance of those lost, to help her reconnect & heal.

She reached out to me through the WOKO Facebook page, explaining what had happened and how she felt isolated being in upstate New York while so many who had support were out west. The east coast survivors were scattered from Pennsylvania up to New York, but she felt very alone. She researched support groups and found the 58 Acts of Kindness group on Facebook and thought it would be a way to help heal from this senseless tragedy.

She came into one of our WOKO Big Change Roundup events inside the Walmart garden center, a cavernous building that must've brought up a bit of anxiety considering all she had been through. She stoically came in with a donation she made in honor of her 22nd act of kindness, Austin Meyer, who was only 24 years old when he lost his life. It appeared on a simple orange piece of paper and I shook when I held it. Maybe it was because my own son will be 24 in June, maybe because I wasn't expecting it - but it moved me to tears. And we both wept.

And I started to feel something we all need to feel more in this country - Connection. Community. Great loss and great admiration for a woman who was thrown unexpectedly into a war zone doing something as simple as watching a country music concert. But she will not back down; she persists. She WILL go to a concert again, and she's listening again to Jason Aldean's music and not allowing this to lay her low, but to bring her up, along with the rest of us.