Last Christmas, our office did a Secret Santa exchange.<\/p>\n
My coworker, Natalie, drew my name and gave me a delicate silver ring with a small green stone.<\/p>\n
It felt surprisingly personal for an office gift, but she simply said she had found it at a little antique shop and thought I would like it.<\/p>\n
I wore it constantly.<\/p>\n
Almost a year later, while cleaning it, I noticed a tiny groove around the stone.<\/p>\n
Curious, I twisted the top.<\/p>\n
It opened.<\/p>\n
Inside was a tiny folded piece of paper.<\/p>\n
Only two words were written on it:<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep going.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat there staring.<\/p>\n
Years earlier, after my older brother died, he had left me a handwritten note with those exact words.<\/p>\n
I had never told anyone at work about it.<\/p>\n
The next morning, I asked Natalie where she had bought the ring.<\/p>\n
She gave me the name of a small estate shop across town.<\/p>\n
I went there that afternoon.<\/p>\n
The owner checked his records and told me the ring had come from a box of personal belongings purchased from an old apartment clearance.<\/p>\n
Then he mentioned the address.<\/p>\n
I froze.<\/p>\n
My brother had lived in that building years ago.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll never know for certain whether the ring had actually belonged to him or whether the note had been placed there for someone else.<\/p>\n
Maybe it was coincidence.<\/p>\n
Maybe not.<\/p>\n
But standing there with that tiny note in my hand, I suddenly felt connected to a part of my life I thought was gone forever.<\/p>\n
Natalie had believed she was giving me a pretty antique ring.<\/p>\n
Instead, she unknowingly returned two words I had needed once before.<\/p>\n
And somehow, I needed them again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last Christmas, our office did a Secret Santa exchange. My coworker, Natalie, drew my name and gave me a delicate silver ring with a small green stone. It felt surprisingly personal for an office gift, but she simply said she had found it at a little antique shop and thought I would like it. I …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10013,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10011\/revisions\/10013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}