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Meet Terry Helwig
I’m not sure when I first began believing we humans are more alike than different.
Maybe it happened while sitting in my favorite oak tree on my grandparent’s farm; or maybe growing up and moving from one oil town to another in the American Southwest caused me to recognize a common thread running through people everywhere; or maybe I was born believing each of us is grafted to the same root of an old family tree. In any event, much of my life’s direction has been guided by my belief that we each have within us the capacity to live compassionate lives, caring for one another and the planet on which we live.
Despite hard times growing up, I always found a thread of hope to sustain me. That’s why, after 9/11, I cut a piece of blue twine and twirled it between my fingertips; it personified my shred of hope. I decided to find out if others felt as I did.
Over the course of five years, I invited people world-wide to send me their threads of hope and goodwill. I was amazed as thousands of threads began to arrive. Eventually, I enlisted weavers in fourteen countries to set up looms to weave these incredibly diverse fibers into tapestries to promote tolerance, diversity and compassionate community. I had no way of knowing then that five years later my blue thread of hope, woven together with tens of thousands of other threads, would find its way into St. Paul’s Chapel in New York City, across from Ground Zero, for the five-year anniversary of 9/11. As the colorful tapestries hung from the balconies, I stepped up to the microphone to share the story of how one small thread had brought me there.
The Thread Project tapestries are a metaphor for the fabric of life we all share. We all are part of the same cloth--more alike than different. I cannot relinquish my hope that we humans have the capacity to live compassionate lives. Global change is not easy, but surely it isn’t impossible. Maybe it happens slowly, one thread at a time.
Terry graduated with an MA in counseling psychology. Before founding The Thread Project, she specialized in women’s personal growth and development. Terry currently writes fulltime; her memoir Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter’s Memoir will be released by Simon & Schuster October 2011.* She and her husband Jim divide their time between the coasts of southwest Florida and South Carolina.
*To find out more about Terry’s memoir “Moonlight on Linoleum” visit her website terryhelwig.com
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