My Two Cents on Self-Love

Haydens Way

De: Mistilei Wriston, Kenya Evelyn Whaley, Meeka Caissie, Suzy Belcher, Steve Hudgins, Crystal Clenney, Yvette Swanson-Jones, Jonathan Troen, Susannah Dawn

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

In the late 90s, before I was introduced to the internet, I needed to raise money to take my highly disabled son to a specialist. I lived in a rural area outside a metroplex and had a mind for numbers. I did the calculations and realized that if everyone in that giant city donated two cents, I would have enough without anyone going into debt.

With marker and poster board, I made a sign to this effect, taped photos of my son and the doctor, and headed off to the local grocery store with my baked goods in hand. My daughter and son were in the stroller, and we set up camp.

It started slow, people would buy a cookie, and some would leave a little extra change. As the cookies began to run low, someone came out with cookies they purchased and donated them to our cause. Eventually, a local church that I didn’t even attend donated baked goods for me to sell, and in a short time, I raised the funds.

This was a time when alternative medicine was very hush-hush and very expensive. It was also a time I was married with no idea where my husband was from day to day and desperately poor. I milked goats twice a day to provide the milk my son needed. It was a difficult time, and somehow, those little donations from people allowed me to take him to the specialist and defy the medical community.

He not only lived past birth, past infancy, childhood, and puberty, but he also lived 10178 incredible days. He used each of them to teach me the value of the two cents worth in the smallest increments of joy.

As my life progressed, I spent a year traveling with a group of people called Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership. It was expensive and exquisite and worth every cent. The lasting value from the various people I met in the crowd at those events is a value beyond measure.

A few months ago, I decided to have a light summer. I wanted to do a small book on SELF-LOVE to release on the anniversary of my first solo compilation, Here Comes the Sun. I set the schedule carefully so my son and I could enjoy our first summer in our new, beautiful home in Western Arkansas.

He had other plans, and on June 2, 2023, on day 10178 as his mother, my son, my best friend, my confidant, and a young man I have been with 24/7 since the pandemic started, went on his next journey and shoved me through a funnel I thought I might somehow have avoided. I became a parent who lost a child.

I am so thankful my summer schedule was already light, so I can grieve and honor him at my pace. I am thankful I devoted two decades to life insurance and the past ten years to helping myself, and others break cycles of pain. I know the steps. I am so grateful for the love and support of every author in this book that trusted me to deliver their incredible stories and this book to the world.

My son, Hayden Ray, built a warrior out of a broken little girl. He taught me how to stand firm in my truth. He taught me to use my thoughts to change our world and to use writing to create my emotional reality. He taught this to everyone who crossed his path in some way or another. He taught me to love myself in order to help him. He taught us Hayden’s Way. I will be an example of this for the duration.

Please know you are never alone, and it is my wish that you feel my love for you and this project. I have received such support since Hayden Ray passed that I can joyfully overflow into others—a gift I will cherish and respect.

With gratitude, we are all one,

Mistilei Wriston, Compiler