Melissa Schwartz answers the question:

What is the nicest thing a non-family member has ever done for you?

Oh, what a question. The story that comes to mind, the thing that comes to mind is when I was 21, my last semester in college, I studied abroad in the Himalayas. I was in India, Nepal, and Tibet for four months and I left to go there the very end of August of 2001. At the time, my parents were both working in New York City. I grew up in New York. My mom was running a corporate daycare center on Wall Street.

On the evening of September 11th in Dharamshala, India, well, I guess it was earlier in the day, I had gotten an email from my mom saying that she was at work and was having a really busy day. She had just gotten there and settled in. There was only one internet cafe in this very small little town, and I went out to dinner with some American students that I was on this program with and as we all know what happened on that day, somebody at the table next to us said, "Oh, are you Americans? Did you know the world trade center got blown up?"

We looked at him like, "What are you talking about?" When we left the cafe, we could see the footage that everybody saw on a TV screen in a nearby bar. I thought, "Oh my God, this guy wasn't making it up and oh my God, my mom is there." I knew I needed to get to the internet cafe so that I could try and call my family and see what was going on because the time change it was evening and it was still early morning in New York.

In the same bar where I could see the footage, I saw the guy who ran the internet cafe, the one internet cafe in Dharamshala. I said to him, "You need to open up your shop for us. We all need to call our families." He stopped what he was doing and he took us to his shop and he opened up the doors and he let us get on the computers and make phone calls for hours. It took hours until I was able to get my grandma on the phone. I couldn't get in touch with either of my parents, cell phone service wasn't great. But I was able to get in touch with my grandmother who told me that she spoke with my mom and dad and that they were both okay and as true New Yorkers, they had managed to find their way out of the city, using all of the secret bridges that they knew from growing up there.

Then the next day I got to go to the Dali Lama's monastery, where he held a prayer session and helped us to cultivate compassion for everybody in the world, because we were all reeling from what happened, compassion for people involved, compassion for the people who would do what they did, compassion for us, who are far from our homes and our families.

That whole experience was a real turning point in my life because it helped me to realize that when I follow my intuition, my guidance, which told me that I needed to do this study abroad program, even though it didn't really make any sense, but I knew that I had to do it, that I found myself in this small town in the Himalayas where I ended up being with the Dali Lama the day after 9/11 and I had this very kind man who opened up the door to his internet cafe, didn't charge us for his services, which he'd been charging us for them in the week prior and made sure that we were able to get in touch with our families to ensure that they were all safe. 

Fortunately, everybody was able to get in touch with their families and they were all safe. We all had a really relaxing experience after that evening and had the outcome that we're all hoping for. So my gratitude goes back to that man, whose name I don't know, who I probably will never see again in my life, but who extended real kindness to me in a time when I needed it.
 

Melissa Schwartz was born an intense, sensitive, and empathic power seeker. Her intuitive ability to decode misbehavior, and her passion for giving a voice to the legitimate needs of children, naturally evolved into meaningful work as co-creator of Leading Edge Parenting, co-author of Authentic Parenting Power and author of soon-to-be-published books Under the Hood: A Manual to Understand the Inner Workings of Children and Rico's Bumpy Week. 

She is an internationally acclaimed author, coach and public speaker, and offers a new perspective on highly sensitive children (and sensory processing disorder) that is based on personal experience and current research.