"When you learn to love and accept yourself, you learn to love and accept others. By loving yourself, you show others how to love. I'm very spiritual, and the Bible says 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself.' So before you know it you have this whole circle of nothing but love going around." "Was there a time that you had to learn to love yourself?" "Yes. In a time when somebody is different, like I am, you have to learn to accept everything that is different about yourself and learn to *love* it, and not just tolerate it, but embrace it and walk in your differentness. There was definitely a time that the things that were different about me, I hated and wished I could change them. And it wasn't until I fully embraced my differentness and started to love my differentness that it started to change other people, and it turned out to be more of a blessing to others than to myself."
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Woman on right: "Pray. Keep God first. I had to count on my faith when I became homeless. I was going through a domestic violence situation. I lost my job of six years to go to a shelter, and then my job wouldn't let me back. Soon after that, i got into a shelter near here and things started coming back together. And I'm back and even better than I was before." "I'm a high school teacher, so part of my job is to try to inspire young people and so I try to find that inspiration every day." "What drew you to teaching?" "My father was a teacher and it just kind of came naturally to me. I've been a teacher and a coach my whole life and I've kind of enveloped my whole life around that idea." He told me his name is Psynce (pronounced "science") and that "music is an art form that anyone can express" and he's doing his best to interpret it: "You'll never reach your full potential because you shouldn't limit yourself at all, so there's no way you should have to gauge that, you get what I'm saying? You have things that come against you in life; there's always gonna be some kind of pressing force. And there comes a time when you just go autopilot to get past things. So, it's like, don't put a limit on yourself because you'll never understand what you;re fully capable of. You'll always surprise yourself. Like me--musically, creating. I wanted to push myself to do production. I didn't know much about it; I got a program, taught myself the ins and outs of it and put a product out." "When I got divorced, I worked for a company that was located in Frenchtown, New Jersey, and I lived in Frenchtown with my wife. We had a nice house and two kids. When the divorce came about, I didn't want to change my job, but I didn't want to stay living in Frenchtown. So I drew a circle around Frenchtown that was a half-hour drive, and it touched Easton, and I'd never even *been* to Easton. I moved here in 1993, and I've been here ever since, and I will die here because it's such a good city. The activities: the Farmers' Market, the Heritage Day celebration, the music. I love the School of Rock kids. The restaurants. It's just a great town." "I had to stay strong minded when my mom passed away when I was 21. That was a very difficult time for me." "What's your best memory of your mom?" "She would always call me beautiful. She was like, 'No matter what, you're beautiful. I want to call you beautiful every time I see you. If someone else puts you down, you don't have nothing to be discouraged about because you're beautiful.' She used to always say that." |
These are the stories of the people of Easton, PA Archives
August 2018
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