So much of living what you love has to do with community and relationships. And when you’re facing difficult situations, the people in your life become more important than ever. We learned this first-hand when we had to close our children’s store back in the early 1980s. We were flat broke, we were 3 months behind in our mortgage payments and Bob was working as a carpenter just to put food on the table. That’s when we started making salad dressings and dessert sauces in our kitchen and our gourmet food line, Blanchard & Blanchard, was born. What we remember most about that time, though, was how our neighbors showed up on our doorstep to help us out. People we hardly knew felt badly that our store had closed and wanted to help us in some way. So they would come to the house after work and help stir fudge sauce and put labels on jars.
We just interviewed two boat builders on Martha’s Vineyard for an upcoming LWYL television show, and their story is another example of people giving help when help was needed. These men started off with next to nothing. They scraped together what they could to open a boatyard, and today, their business is extremely successful. But along the way, they suffered a disastrous loss when their entire operation burned to the ground in the middle of the night. Everything was lost. Just when they were wondering how they’d ever be able to pull their lives and their business back together, the local community showed up with hammers and saws and organized something similar to an old-fashioned barn-raising. In an incredibly short amount of time, the entire boatyard was rebuilt and Gannon & Benjamin was back in business.
How do these stories apply to today’s news? People we all know - neighbors, friends, community members - are now being affected by the economic meltdown on Wall Street. It really is hitting people on Main Street. Giving help to them doesn’t mean loaning money. It means showing them that you care by helping out in whatever way you can. Patronize the struggling local business. Offer to babysit for the overworked mom. Suggest free or inexpensive ways to get together with people who are now on a limited budget. Hard times can bring us together. To experience this is one of the best things in the world - and it takes your mind off your own troubles for a while!
