After losing a loved one during the COVID-19 pandemic, California Realtor Christina Gray fostered her own healing by creating a sense of connection in her local community in the midst of a lockdown. Along with her husband and two children, Gray left plants on her neighbors' doorsteps, and that initiative soon grew to include 10 families who gifted 50 plants to community members in need of an uplifting surprise, the National Association of Realtors reports.
What began as a simple act of kindness is now The Planting Love Project. Gray's East Bay Area chapter is still going strong, and the connections that have formed as a result of her community service have even led to a successful liver transplant.
“Some of the reactions were caught on Ring doorbell cams, and it was really cool to see,” Gray recalls. Her in-laws were one of the couples chosen to help deliver the plants, and they’d chosen friends of theirs—Heidi and Mike. At that time, Mike was dying of liver failure and in desperate need of a partial liver transplant to survive. “For one full day, they tried and tried to figure out who had given them the plant, which kept his mind off needing a liver.”
Knowing he had received 12 hours of peace from his daily struggle touched her heart, Gray says. But the gift would go on to do much more. Ever the detectives, Mike and Heidi’s sleuthing led them to Gray’s in-laws—and, thus, to Gray. Before long, the local newspaper received word of Gray’s group and reached out for an interview. Then, a local TV station called. Gray used her new public platform to bring awareness to Mike’s need for a liver. The paper ran two stories, and after Gray’s segment aired on television, 11 people called in to help Mike with a liver transplant.
The eleventh person was a match.
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