Inspiring News Stories
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Stories in Major Media
Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news stories from the major media. Links are provided to the original stories on their media websites. If any link fails to function, click here. The inspiring news story summaries most recently posted here are listed first. You can explore the same list with the most inspiring stories listed first. See also a concise list providing headlines and links to a number of highly inspiring stories. May these articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.
Growing up in a rough housing project on Chicago's South Side during the early 1960s, Alexis Martinez had to hide that she was transgender. "When I came out to my mom that I was transgender, I think I was 13 or 14," Alexis says. "And she called the police. And I always remember that when the police showed up, they just laughed and told her, 'You've got a fag for a son, and there's nothing we can do about it. So, I went as macho as I could be, to mask what I really was underneath," explains Alexis, now 62. One day, [Alexis' daughter] Lesley discovered some of her father's female clothes. "It was a big to-do," Lesley says. "It was sort of, you know, my uncovering the secret." Alexis knew trying to cover up that she was transgender would mean a loss of trust with her daughter — so she told. "I was really torn between being a female role model and a dad," Alexis says. "And so, I said to myself, 'OK, well be the best parent. Whatever it takes, however I do it, you have to look out for your baby.' But one of the most difficult things for me was, I was always afraid that I wouldn't be allowed to be in my granddaughters' lives." She needn't have worried. Lesley and her husband's acceptance, Alexis says, "blew that completely out of the water. To Alexis, the openness with which her family can talk about her gender identity "is a miracle," she says. "Now I walk in love, and I try to live that way every day."
Note: Watch a beautiful, moving video by the founder of StoryCorps, which led to this story.
