Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Stephanie Breon LaManna with me. Welcome, Stephanie.
Stephanie Breon Lamanna: Thank you for having me.
Toni: Absolutely. So, Stephanie, take a moment and tell us just a little bit about yourself.
Stephanie: I’m originally from Florida. I’ve lived in Berks County the majority of my life, in and out for college and different projects that I have been involved in. I work for Haven Behavioral Hospital, which is an acute inpatient psychiatric hospital here in downtown.
Toni: That’s what you do.
Stephanie: I do. I’m married and have three children.
Toni: Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be part of this Project.
Stephanie: Thank you for including me. It’s exciting.
Toni: Let’s go into it. Stephanie, was does inspiration mean to you?
Stephanie: Inspiration means a lot of different things for me. For example, I was parking to come here, and I was feeding the kiosk, and a lady in Spanish came up and said, “Hola, hola,” and handed me her ticket.
Toni: How cool is that?
Stephanie: Right? I had already put a quarter into a kiosk, and I printed my ticket and I left it, so she inspired me to pay it forward and leave a ticket in there for the next person to come. She literally stopped her vehicle, flagged me down, and in Spanish gave me her ticket and spoke to me.
Toni: I love that.
Stephanie: I mean, that’s on my way here. Inspiration means a lot of different things. People inspire me. Traveling inspires me. Day-to-day work inspires me. My children inspire me. It’s not just one specific pinhole. It’s not a round peg going in the round hole. It’s many different things that inspire me.
Toni: Do you know when you are?
Stephanie: Yeah.
Toni: What does it feel like?
Stephanie: It feels warm and puts a smile on your face, and makes you think how grateful you are to have met that person or seen that thing or the image, or come across such inspiration.
Toni: We really want to hold to that, don’t we, when it happens?
Stephanie: Right, because we live in such a convoluted environment sometimes that it’s the little things. Kindness costs nothing.
Toni: How do you take mentality, when you feel it — because we want to stay there when it happens — how do you take that and put that into practice here in Berks County?
Stephanie: I do it personally by paying it forward, through many things. As simple as leaving a ticket in the kiosk. Recently I sat down next to a lady. I was donating a basket for a charity event. I wear a bracelet. It says, “Be a Live Saver.” She asked me about my bracelet. It’s for suicide prevention awareness. It was meant for me to sit there, because her husband had committed suicide 17 months before. A 5-minute drop off to donate something turned into helping someone through a rough time and giving her resources for survivors of suicide. I mean, you hold onto that, and you know you’re helping someone else get through the darkness. I think that’s really important that you hold onto those feelings and know that you made someone else’s day that much brighter or more special, or made them feel not alone at that moment.
Toni: It’s really cool, because when you’re inspired, it is a warm feeling, and it sounds like very caring. For you to share that, take the time, create a space to help someone out in that moment, that is inspiring, and that is kindness at play. That’s amazing. There are no such things as coincidences, are there?
Stephanie: No. I believe that.
Toni: Who in Berks County inspires you?
Stephanie: A lot of people in Berks County inspire me. Just the lady on the street inspired me. Through my work, I get to teach classes for people at Hope Springs and Mosaic House that suffer from mental illness. It could be depression all the way through schizophrenia, and those folks inspire me. You walk in the door and they’re like, “You look so pretty!” They just want to be like everybody else; but because of their diagnosis, they’re not seen that way. You have to see past. You can't just take someone by the way they look. I think you really have to take the time to listen to people and get to know them.
That’s what inspires me, to take a breath and take a moment and say, “Hey, what’s going on with this person?” or, “How can I help this person?” They inspire me. People who struggle inspire me. People just who walk by you and smile. It lights up your day. It makes you feel better. You’ve made their day. They’ve made yours. You just pass it on. I would say inspiration comes around every corner, or it can, but you have to be open to it, and you have to be observant to see it.
Toni: I think that’s key. You have to have your eyes open, and you have to be willing to see it. These people inspire you. The people you work for and with inspire you. Anybody else that you can think of that inspires you?
Stephanie: I have a good friend, Lisa. She inspires me. She works with special needs children at the Reading School District. She goes above and beyond for her students. They don’t usually have the backpacks or the tools they need for the classroom, so she brings them in on her own. She donates a lot to different organizations. She’s probably the kindest person I’ve ever met in my life. Robyn Jones inspires me to be a better person. She’s so kind and so inclusive, and it’s very infectious and contagious. I think when you surround yourself around people that inspire you, it’s just a way to emulate yourself and to always be on the lookout for it.
Toni: Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah. What would you like your legacy to be?
Stephanie: That I was kind and that I made a difference in people’s lives, whether it be little or small. We all struggle every day in different forms or fashions, whether it’s your family member is ill, you’re going through a divorce, your child is sick, you just didn’t feel like it today. I want to know that my legacy is — and I try and instill this in my children, and my daughter is really good at it — that you have to take a moment and look through people and see people. Don’t be so self-absorbed. Make the world a better place.
She’s done that since she was little. We went to the Second Street Station over at Opportunity House. She must have been 5. There’s a bunch of little kids that didn’t have socks on. She’s like, “Aren’t your feet cold?” She was little. They’re like, “Yeah.” She said, “Well, where are your socks? I’ll put them on for you.” They said, “We don’t have socks.” She said, “My mom will go buy you socks.” She came up to me and she said, “We have to go to Walmart and buy 10 packs of socks for these kids.” We did. That was at a young age, and she continues to do that. She sees kids at school struggling and she’ll sit down with them at lunch, or she’ll say, “Can I invite so-and-so over to the house for dinner?” Yeah. Absolutely. I really see that, and that is my legacy. I think that’s probably the best way to describe my legacy.
Toni: Well, you mentioned one of the things that moves you is that we need to mirror what we see when you’re inspired, right? It sounds to me like your daughter is totally mirroring, and the word that you’ve used a lot through this interview is “kind” and “kindness.” So, I would imagine you are definitely living your legacy. Thank you so very much for showing up for this Project.
Stephanie: Thank you for having me.
