The biggest inspiration behind the Nelly Event blog and all the content I collect is based on a true story that goes like this: One day grammy brought to our condo a homeless man who was so kind to offer help carrying her groceries home from the farmers market. She let him take a shower, gave him grandfathers clothes and during dinner was all ears listening to his heartbreaking story of losing his job, addiction to alcohol if I remember correctly (I was a child), violating relationship with his wife and children, becoming homeless and diving into lasting depression. In Ukraine at the time homeless people were extremely challenged to survive unlike here in the US with all the charity organizations and churches. This man looked very scary, he smelled very bad and I did not feel safe around him, but grammy invited him to come over anytime. And he did. For a while he was coming frequently and all grammy did is she let him clean himself, gave him clothes, fed him and was listening to all his stories as a friend. One day he disappeared and so did our axe. All I said to grammy was: told you! Now that’s scary. She smiled and said: well, maybe he just needs it to chop some wood to stay warm. Long story short we haven’t heard anything from him and we had no idea what happened to him. Grammy said: all you can do is be nice to people and hope for the best. One day I heard a doorbell when we didn’t expect anyone. I opened the door and saw this man dressed in a nice suit with a box of candy and a bouquet of flowers asking for Nelly Aleksandrovna. The first reaction was: Who are you? Grandpa’s at work. He smiled and said: oh, remember that homeless man who used to come over? He apologized for the axe and I went to call grammy. I could not believe my eyes! Grammy invited him for dinner as usually and he told her that he got a job, got his family back and that he was so grateful that my grandmother was the only person at that time who didn’t look down on him and was simply there.