Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Cathy Coffman with me. Welcome, Cathy.
Cathy Cuff-Coffman: Well, hello. How are you doing?
Toni: I am doing great. How are you doing?
Cathy: I’m well.
Toni: Good. So, Cathy, take a moment and tell us just a little bit about yourself.
Cathy: Well, I am a displaced Philadelphia area girl living in the Elverson/Morgantown area for 29 years. I am getting used to it now. I’m a freelance writer, musician (jazz), and I like to work. I do various jobs just for fun and just to meet people. Love my kids, love my husband, and just like life.
Toni: That sounds perfect to me. Absolutely. Alright. Shall we jump into the Project?
Cathy: Let’s do it.
Toni: Okay. What does inspiration mean to you?
Cathy: Well, when I got the information about this, I’d been thinking about it. I think what inspiration means to me is looking into each day and seeing valuable things in an ordinary life, and walking away from that and saying, “That was a good thing,” because you can go through an entire day and think it was just not even a good day, but there’s always good moments in every single day, if you just take a moment and say, “Mmm. That was pretty good.”
Toni: Those valuable moments, are they the ones that inspire you?
Cathy: They kind of are, yeah. There’s things that I don’t know if other people even see them, but sometimes I do. I thought about this. I write a lot of stories, and I started out as a trade writer, like trade magazines. I would have to write about things, and I would say to people, “You wouldn’t even be interested,” but I would go and talk to these people, and they were so interesting, because they were interested in what they were doing. I would come away from that interview or that session with somebody being inspired, because they were inspiring, because they were interested in what they were doing, which you would walk away and think, “No one else would even care, but they care.” They care so much, that I’m inspired by them. You look at people and you think, “I don’t know anything about that person, but I wonder what it is that makes them tick?”
Toni: It’s like a curiosity.
Cathy: It is. It’s fascinating. Everybody has their little life, but everybody has something.
Toni: When was the last time you were inspired?
Cathy: I’m writing a story right now for Berks County Living, and I think that’s how you and I connected. It’s about mustard.
Toni: Mustard.
Cathy: Yeah. I have to finish the story, but I went up to talk to the guy, and he’s just totally into what he’s doing. He has a vision. He wants to be bigger than I thought he even thought he could be. Yeah. You just go, “I’m going to do this story about mustard,” and he was really inspiring.
Toni: So, how do you take that curiosity, that inspiration when you’re doing a story or you’re noticing something that you find value in, and put that into practice here in Berks County?
Cathy: Just in my interactions with other people. Everybody I feel has been given — maybe not in a dramatic sense — but everybody has to have a second chance or is given a second chance, and I’ve had second chances also. I look at my own interactions with people sometimes, and I fail. We all do, sometimes. I think, “How could I be better?” Then, especially I think about the people that are in my life like my family, my kids, the people that have been with me the longest, and I think about…I just take a step back sometimes when I’m interacting with others or doing what I do and think, “How do I want to be thought of?”
Maya Angelou said it. “It’s not what you say. It’s how you make people feel.” There are just little snippets that you can go along the way and think about that, because sometimes you’ll go away from something and say, “Ah. I wasn’t so good at that.” Then you can take from other people and say, “That’s how I want to be.”
Toni: So, you’re really learning and building character along the way as you are inspired?
Cathy: Exactly.
Toni: Have you ever heard the phrase, “We teach what we need to learn?”
Cathy: Sometimes, yeah.
Toni: Yeah. I love that. That’s what that reminds me of. Who in Berks County inspires you?
Cathy: Actually, I can't pick out individual people, but local musicians. Chris Burkholder is one. He’s down in Morgantown. Local musicians who put themselves out there. They’re fascinating and they’re fabulous, and they’re putting themselves out there in live shows and performing. Maybe never going to be on MTV or they’re not going to be nationally known, but they’re just so talented and so good at what they do, and they’re honing their craft every day, and giving us the gift of what they do. I’m always inspired by that.
Toni: Okay. Is it strictly musicians, or is it anybody who puts themselves out there?
Cathy: Pretty much anybody that puts themselves out there, even if you’re not noticing it at the time, and then you might think about it later and think, “That was pretty good.” Or, you think, “That person,” and it really is people that do things for other people without even expecting recognition. They do it quietly. You’ll see people that do something, and then they’ll have to post it. No. It’s people that are the unassuming heroes of our lives, and they just do it. You may feel the effect of it, or somebody else may see the effect of it, and then it helps everybody.
Toni: So, what do you want your legacy to be?
Cathy: I’ve not thought about that, really. I’m a pretty spontaneous person, and I know sometimes my spontaneity is good, and sometimes maybe not so good, so I think at the end of the day, if you make somebody laugh or you make somebody smile, if you get them into a story and then they read to the end, maybe I hope they read to the end of my story.
Toni: Well, you’re living your legacy, and I love the fact that you’ve tied together what inspires you and what it means to you, which is finding value in ordinary things, and also being inspired by those who put themselves out there and are brave. I thank you for coming and showing up for the Get Inspired! Project.
Cathy: Thanks for having me.
Toni: Thank you.