Smiling at Strangers How One Introvert Discovered the Power of Being Kind

It all started with a smile. A trip to the local farmers market created an opportunity for the author of Smiling at Strangers to offer a simple kindness to a stressed young mother shopping with four small children. She made eye contact and smiled, and the mother responded with a soft "Thank you." This single act is one of the greatest gifts we can give one another. The message it sends is, I see you and acknowledge our kinship as members of the human species doing the best we can. I wish you well.

Everyone deserves to be seen and acknowledged. In a world that many experience as cold and lonely, receiving a simple smile can bring the warmth of connection, however brief.

Smiling at Strangers: How One Introvert Discovered the Power of Being Kind, written by a shy and introverted author, is a handbook for building a community of kindred souls who share her mission to create a kinder world one smile at a time. Although it has much to offer to anyone wanting to share kindness with others, its target audience is kind-hearted socially shy introverts who tend to restrict interactions with strangers in public places. It will empower even the most introverted among us to interact in the world in a different way through actions as simple as a smile of acknowledgment.

The seed that became Smiling at Strangers was planted in 1955, when its author, Nancy Lewis, received a surprise award for Excellence in English at the Senior Awards Ceremony of her high school in New London, Connecticut. Nancy remembers telling her mother the next morning, "Someday I'm going to write a book. But first I have to get some life experience." Six decades of life experience later, at the age of 80, she began to write that book. The intervening "experience" has included marriage to a life partner, two sons, five grandchildren, college and university degrees, employment as an English teacher, librarian, and freelance editor, and residence in six states plus British Columbia. She currently lives with her husband Richard in Bellingham, Washington, where she continues to look for opportunities to offer smiles and small kindnesses to strangers.