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From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar Vedantan. This is my

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unsung hero, stories where one person

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reached out to help another in a time of

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need. Hi Shankar. My

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unsung hero is a Frenchman.

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She had given me exactly

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what I needed in that

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time. I was fortunate enough to survive with

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the help of this man, this doctor, who

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went out of his way to help

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save my life. Today's

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story comes from Molly Baker. In

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March 2018, Molly lost her

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husband Marlin in a skiing accident. She

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was devastated. In the first

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few weeks after his death, her community

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provided a lot of support. But

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after a while, the cards and meals

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started to slow down. People

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have families come into town and families left. People

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have to get back to their jobs. People have

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to get back to their normal life. And so

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things kind of drop off. I

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had a dear friend of mine, Carla Vale,

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who came up with this idea

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that maybe she could set

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up a calendar of

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sorts that would assign people a particular

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day. And what that

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looked like for them was that on

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that day, they would reach out to

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me in some tangible way, maybe via

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text, maybe a phone call,

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maybe a card, they would

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drop off a card, maybe they would drop some

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chocolates or something off on my door. It didn't

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have to be anything big. And

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then also for me, I could look

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at the calendar. I was given the names. And so

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I could look at the calendar and be like, oh,

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it's the sixth today. And

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so and so is assigned. And

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I could reach out to them as well

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if I needed some emotional support or just

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needed something like maybe I needed them to

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run an errand for me or, you know,

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if that was possible. So it

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worked both ways. A

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lot of people are really, really uncomfortable around grief

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and loss. And so what they do

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is instead of doing something, they just do nothing and

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they don't say anything. And that's the worst. I

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mean, I remember going to the grocery store and I

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would see someone in the distance, they would know me

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and they would literally turn around and walk the other

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direction because they were so uncomfortable. They

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were so uncomfortable with my loss

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that they didn't know what to say to me. So

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that's why it was nice to have

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that Calendale girl set up so that that was

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tangible, like, oh, you could send a text, you could

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do this, some ideas of

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tangible ways was very helpful.

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I love that Carla did this and it was

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a way that she was

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able to use her unique gifts

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to help other people love on me.

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And I will always be grateful, forever

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grateful for that year in my

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life. Molly

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Baker lives in Sammamish, Washington. To

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share your story about your unsung

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hero, record a voice memo on

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your phone and email it to

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us at myunsunghero at hiddenbrain.org. Again,

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that email address is

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myunsunghero at hiddenbrain.org. I'm

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Shankar Vedantam. See you soon. Bye.