CANDICE PARISI

When I arrived in India alone, he met me in a very crowded airport. Madan was quite a man. He held up a sign with "JAI" on it and a smile. Nothing screams safety in India, so his friendship and guidance while there was priceless. Madan was in his early 70's and had never made a pilgrimage across India before so he jumped at the chance to do it with me. He wasn't physically well and he knew a final adventure fit right into his schedule. We got on the first train and didn't sto

Your only job every day is simple. Walk. My friend Wendy and I walked across a part of Northern Spain. There is a trail that is marked with yellow arrows that starts in France and goes all the way across the upper portion of Spain. The route is called Camino de Santiago. Every year hundreds of people take this trek and it is the experience of a lifetime. We got up early in the mornings and ate whatever we could get our hands on and then put on our backpacks and walked. The mo

I recommend getting your heart grabbed by as many people as you can fit into your schedule. Before I left America, I was volunteering for a hospice in Arizona. In America, HIV is manageable and people are living very long lives because of proper medication. In turn there are not many AIDS infected individuals in hospice care. I told them if they come across anyone with AIDS that I was their person. They called me up one day and said that they had a young woman with full-blown

You may go your whole life without anyone really stopping long enough to truly see you and find you. My job in South Africa was to take care of adults and children as they died of AIDS and teach others how to do the same. To teach people how to be with someone and be present for them and support them as they pass. I was in the hospice field for some time. As a kid I would go to the nursing home down the street to hang out with the old folks. I would just sit and listen to sto

People come in and out of our lives every day. Sometimes you pass by somebody on the street and they affect you. You share a brief moment, and that's it, they are never in your view again. Sometimes people come into your life and you share many moments and they affect you forever. People have the opportunity to have a great impact in your life. Knowingly or not, you impact others. In my travels, I have met extraordinary human beings, and I wrote about them in my journals. Her

I have secrets Every Thursday for a full year, I snuck away from my life in Sarasota, Florida. I would drive north. Not too far, just two hours. I would begin my day at Busch Gardens. Entering the amusement park, I would bypass everything else to get to the Gorillas. I would sit in the same spot, really close to the glass and watch them. I imagined that the gorillas knew me and talked to each other about how annoying it was to have me come and stare at them every week. “Here