From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is My Unsung Hero, stories where one person reached out to help another in a time of need.

My Unsung Hero is my therapist.

He said, it's okay.

I still love you.

You're still my best friend.

So if she hears this, I just want to say, thank you.

Today's story comes from Connie Sherber.

In 2020, Connie's husband of 31 years, Peter, died in a plane accident.

The next morning, she went to their insurance company to transfer his truck's insurance into her name.

With pandemic precautions still in place, the office was staffed by just one person.

So I knocked on the door, and she let me in, and it didn't take her but a few minutes to take care of why I was there.

And then when she got done, she stopped and she looked at me across her desk.

And she made sure that I was looking at her, that she had my full attention.

And she said, okay, so now that we've finished with that people are going to stop and ask you how can i help and then she gave this pregnant pause and then she said let them and i right, let them because I was not the type of person that really reached out

for a lot of help from a lot of people. But because she said it was such force, it really,

really just made sense to me. So I went home and right away I needed help doing a lot of stuff

like I use firewood to heat my house and my plumbing was on the fritz and a friend came and help me

with that. One of the neighbors actually cooked for me for four years din, and her husband delivered the dinners to me.

So if I hadn't gone down to the insurance company and talked to the woman, I would have never

reached out to all these people that helped. In the back of my mind, I kept hearing her voice.

You know, let them.

...