Stephanie, who writes the terrific blog Gold Star 4 Trying, has been  giving out gold stars around Brooklyn and beyond for going on a year, just trying to add a bit of brightness to people’s days just for trying!

She writes: “I am a freelance writer, married mother of two and a would-be…lots of things, so I know what’s it’s like to need a gold star!”

Well, here’s a gold star for Stephanie for an awesome blog. Here’s an excerpt from a post called It Takes a Village:

I have been toying with adding pictures and names on my blog for a while, but had wondered if people would really want to be featured, focused upon? Turns out, some do, some really do and some don’t. But the simple act of imagining that people might actually be buoyed by the recognition has given me a renewed sense of the project, helped me understand how important it is–both for those that want to see themselves and those who don’t–that there is some acknowledgment of people’s efforts.

Because I am energized about the idea anew, believe wholeheartedly in the power of the gold star sticker to make someone’s moment, their day, their week, I am overwhelmed: shouldn’t I give a gold star sticker to everyone I see? Who am I to choose? Why is it just me?

Sitting in temple the other day, a rare thing, I was delighted and amazed by the Rabbi’s story of a little village whose citizens were told that someone among them was the Messiah.

“It could be any one of you that was brought here to save the world…” the story went.

The Rabbi told of how this powerful idea resonated throughout the village, how everyone started to treat everyone else with much more respect, how they started to treat even themselves with much more respect. The idea changed the village into a special place, far better than before, a place where people actually believed in one another’s power to raise each other up and, because they believed it, they actually made it happen.

I was so excited to hear the story. It is, I believe, the same message I am trying to send with my project. Each and every one of us has within us the ability to raise up another, to raise up ourselves, if only we believed we had been granted such a power, if only we thought it possible.