• Why Purple Thread began
Why I Couldn't Walk Away
We don't get to choose what happens to us.
We do get to choose how we treat each other.By Gloria, Founder of Purple Thread
There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after. For me, that moment came on February 14, 2018. I was shopping for Valentine's Day dinner for my family when my phone rang. A friend said there had been a shooting at my son Cisco's high school — Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida.
I immediately called him. He answered. "Mom... I'm hiding from a shooter; I have to go." Then the call ended.
For the next three hours, I didn't know if my seventeen-year-old son was alive or dead. I stood in the grocery store frozen. A woman I had never met saw me crying and asked if I was okay. I told her there was a shooting at my son's school. Without hesitation, she prayed with me. I never learned her name. But I have never forgotten her kindness.
I went home. The phone rang constantly. Friends and family wanted to know if Cisco was safe. I didn't have an answer. So I did the only thing I could do. I cooked. I made three new recipes for our Valentine's dinner. Not because I was hungry. Because I kept telling myself, "I have to make dinner because we're all going to be together tonight." It was hope. It was faith. It was the only thing I could control while living every mother's worst nightmare.
Then the door opened. Cisco walked in, his body soaking wet from running nearly four miles home. I held my son. Unfortunately, seventeen other families would never have that moment. My gratitude has lived beside my grief ever since.
"My gratitude has lived beside my grief ever since."In the days that followed, I witnessed the very best of humanity. Our community wrapped itself around one another. People from all over the world sent messages of love. A psychologist I had never met volunteered to help my son process the trauma. I truly believe that one act of kindness changed the trajectory of his healing.
None of those people could erase what had happened. But they helped us carry it. And sometimes that's the greatest gift one human being can give another.
Looking back, I realized Parkland wasn't where my story began. As a little girl, my Aunt Kathryn saw something in me that I couldn't yet see in myself. She called me brave. Strong. Creative. Smart. A leader. She replaced the negative words I believed in myself with words of hope. Years later, my seventh-grade English teacher did the same. She believed in me. She gave me opportunities to lead. She made me feel that my voice mattered.
Throughout my life, I've been surrounded by ordinary people whose kindness quietly changed my future. None of them were famous. None of them were trying to change the world. They simply changed one person's world. Mine.
"None of them were famous. None of them were trying to change the world. They simply changed one person's world. Mine."One year after the shooting, I wrote a simple message on my Facebook profile: "Today I ask you all to practice kindness and repeat again tomorrow." At the time, I didn't know where those words would lead. I only knew that kindness shouldn't be something we remember after tragedy. It should be something we practice while life is ordinary.
The more I watched the world, the more convinced I became that we were asking the wrong questions. We keep asking how to stop tragedy. But I began asking something different. What if we stopped waiting for tragedy to remind us to care about one another?
Shootings continued. Wars continued. Division continued. People kept hurting. I couldn't solve those problems. But I realized I could contribute to the kind of world I wanted to live in. If there is something I can do to make this world a better place, I will do it every day that I am breathing.
The thread was there all along.
Years later, I began to see a common thread running through my life.
A woman whose name I never knew. A psychologist who showed up for my son. An aunt who changed the words I used to describe myself. A teacher who made me believe my voice mattered.
None of them knew where their kindness would lead. They simply chose to show up for another person.
That's the thread.One act connects to another. One person touches another person's life. Most of the time, we'll never know how far something we said or did will travel.
But that doesn't make the act small.
"It makes it extraordinary."And why purple?
I've always loved purple. But it has also come to represent something I believe deeply: there is something extraordinary inside ordinary people and ordinary moments.
You don't have to be famous, powerful or remarkable to make a difference in someone's life. Sometimes you just have to notice the moment and choose to act.
Over years of walking into people's homes during the biggest transitions of their lives, I learned something else. People think buying and selling homes is about property. It isn't. It's about people. Behind every move is a story. A divorce. A new baby. A death. A dream. A financial struggle. A fresh start. Everyone is carrying something invisible.
Sometimes what people need most isn't advice. It's someone who sees them. Someone who walks beside them. Someone who cares.
That's why I created Purple Thread.
Not because the world needed another app.
Because I believe kindness is something we can practice.
We notice an opportunity. We make a choice. We act. We reflect. And then we do it again.
Eventually, something begins to change. We notice more. We act without being reminded. Kindness becomes less about something we believe and more about how we live.
One moment becomes another. One act becomes another.
"And slowly, we create our own Thread."If Purple Thread succeeds beyond my wildest dreams, I don't hope people remember the technology.
I hope they remember how they made someone else feel. I hope children grow up believing kindness is normal. I hope fewer people feel invisible. I hope communities become stronger because people choose to care. And I hope someday we won't need tragedy to remind us that we're connected.
This is my gift to the world.
I believe, down to my core, that we are connected. That ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things. And that what we put into the world matters, even when we never get to see where it goes.
The world doesn't change all at once. It changes one person. One moment. One act at a time.
And somewhere along the way, those moments become a Thread.
That's Purple Thread.
- Gloria