Everyone has a story.

Often the story is close to the surface and easy to find if you make the time to listen. It may not be what you expect, but it helps explain who they are and what is important to them. Struggles, heartache, birth, death, health, addiction, joy, divorce or marriages that last forever. The themes may be similar but the story is never the same.

Our Southern Souls started on December 10, 2015 after I finished writing a story about bus riders in Mobile. I usually interview artists and musicians, but talking with strangers on the bus was different. People without cars trying to get to work, school, shopping or appointments. Depending on public transportation in Mobile is a hard life and telling their stories gave them a voice and a chance to share their struggles. My husband, John, gave me the book Humans of New York filled with interviews on the streets of Manhattan and told me I should do that in the South. Interviews started at the Fairhope Pier and I have done them from Fairhope, Ft. Morgan and Mobile to Cuba, Maine and the Mississippi Delta.

There were 517 interviews during the first year. At least one stranger a day and the interviews are now the best conversations of my day. They are a reminder that people are good and survive tough blows and keep going. No matter who we are or where we are from, we have many of the same dreams and fears.

Most people say yes when I walk up and tell them I have a strange question, but the few no’s have acceptable reasons: no time, privacy and “I like dogs but I don’t like people.” Asking the officer who let me off with a warning for speeding in front of my church was bad timing, and at noon on Monday in the Scarlet Pearl casino, even the winners on slot machines were cold and quickly turned me down.

One interview ended with, “You just got a timeline of my life. You didn’t get who I am.” He was right.
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Many interviews are spiritual and I know that is the person I am supposed to meet. Those conversations often end with, “I needed this today,” “God brought us together,” or “Someone told me something strange would happen to me in 48 hours. You must be it.”

Souls is stepping into someone else’s world or a taking a snapshot of life. It is people on first dates, getting into a costume for a street performance on Bourbon Street, cleaning restrooms in the park or picking sweet potatoes for 40 cents a bucket. It is a couple waiting on their first baby and friends seeing each other for the first time in 35 years.

It’s stories of one single mother about to graduate from nursing school and another thinking of suicide. Or a young police officer patrolling a tough neighborhood in Albany, Georgia, because it is his way to serve God and love His people.

It is what happens around the interviews — being attacked by a dog, keeping a secret that could destroy a marriage and collecting stories about an English teacher with a deadly brain tumor living by the bay in her car with only a few months left to live. The Rolling Stones fans I interviewed in the Havana airport still regularly check in and ask me to visit them in Germany.

It is the response of readers with words of encouragement and support. Some have given gift cards, cash, a computer, even a microwave to help people they will never meet outside these stories. Others left large tips for an oyster shucker because they were moved by his attitude and grace after surviving a car wreck.

A pastor read the story of a couple who had just gotten engaged and wanted to get married that week before their baby came. Days later, he heard their church wouldn’t marry them because the staff didn’t have time, so he married them the morning she was induced. Because of him, mama, daddy and baby had the same last name on their bracelets in the hospital.

It is the stories of Louisiana flood victims who were ignored by the rest of country. They took care of each other because no one else would.

It is people living their dreams and owning a restaurant “on the corner of fat and happy,” giving up good careers in bigger cities to move home and make a difference or being one step ahead of the bull to keep the cowboy safe. It is a counselor who cheers for the underdog and brings love to fear because she was once the underdog, too.

It is the preacher who can no longer handle pastorate duties after a four-wheeler accident five years ago gave him head trauma and broke his leg in two places. He was in ICU for thirty days and no one thought he would live. “That accident was God whipping me. He corrects all of his children and I was out of the will of God. I knew that and he got my attention. God calls it chastisement, and I am still paying for it. I still walk with a cane.”

I didn’t start with a plan for Souls, but it didn’t matter. The stories were there from the beginning. An unemployed veteran holding a cupcake sign on the corner in St. Augustine to earn money for Christmas presents for his kids, or an old man who gave out coupons for free hugs while his wife waited for another treatment in the hospital.

A homeless couple walked for nine days on the back roads of Florida, trying to get to Tennessee for Christmas and a new start closer to family. She has diabetes so he lets her eat first when they get food. He spent most of the money they had left on a pair of good shoes because walking hurt her feet. People drove by and threw trash and diapers at them and a man tore up money in front of them. It was the first (and last) time I have picked up hitchhikers, and we put them on the Greyhound bus to Tennessee. Their cardboard “Tryin-To-Get Home for Christmas” sign is still in my office.

On the morning of Christmas Eve in Jackson, Mississippi, I interviewed two men walking along the road close to my motel.

“We got out of prison yesterday and we don’t know where to go or what to do. We just got some of our clothes are out of the dumpster. Do you really want to talk with us?”

They told of addictions passed down from family and the guilt of breaking into someone’s home and stealing the sense of safety and security from the kids who lived there. One man was addicted to drugs and the other addicted to alcohol because it numbed their pain but they said were working together to stay clean this time. They wanted to tell their story because they hoped it would help others avoid their mistakes.

Emmanuel said he was from the Ottoman Empire and spoke in poetry. “I am on my way to Heather’s party. You don’t have to do anything. You just disappear as a rainbow and reappear in the magic city of Oz. All of life is being transformed. That means to be born again in rainbowism. There is no mystery, it is everything you’ve been dreaming of. The yellow brick road with Judy and the slippers are being transformed. It’s a long dream, but it’s a real one.”

Flip was gassing up Margaret’s ‘72 Oldsmobile with a “For Sale” sign in the window. Margaret passed away four years ago and his name is already on the tombstone next to hers. He needs the money but would rather keep her car. He still dreams of Margaret and we both cried over her that day.

A young mother told of her abusive ex-husband for the first time since the divorce and chefs in Miami working in their first restaurant were proud to tell of the art and influence of their food.

There were survivors of cancer, car wrecks, strokes and heart attacks with faith in God that can move mountains. People making the most of second chances — a grandmother coming off antidepressants, a mother selling hot dogs to put her daughter through college, and a songwriter learning how to write again after he got sober. Difficult stories coming close to happy endings.

Everyone has a story but we often don’t take the time to listen. The honest, emotional, personal moments that make you see yourself a little differently or understand life in someone else’s shoes. Stories remind us that we are all human and aren’t that far apart.

517 strangers and I have been touched and changed by all of them. I have talked with everyone from prisoners to preachers and famous to homeless and keep learning that every soul has value and there is good in each one.

Their stories are now a part of my story.