How A Piece Of Chalk Changed My Life Lee Anne Bisogno-Chiulli   © Copyright 2025 by Lee Anne Bisogno-Chiulli

Artwork (c) 2025 by the author.

Artwork (c) 2025 by the author.

With work and school cancelled, my teen daughter, Kate, and I were finding ourselves outside more often. Rummaging through the garage one day, I came across a dusty box of sidewalk chalk. We decided to fill in each brick on the pathway leading to our house a different color. We giggled as our hands became stained with bright hues of pink, yellow, and green. We hoped that our “rainbow” would brighten someone’s day. Next to the pathway, in chunky blue chalk, I wrote, “Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter.” This quotation from Neale Donald Walsch has always resonated with me, and I had it committed to memory.

There are many quotations that inspire me. In fact, the door to my refrigerator is overflowing with uplifting sayings that I’ve collected over the years from newspapers, magazines, fortune cookies, tea bags, and even raisin boxes. Sometimes, reading them helps me to change my perspective and see things in a more optimistic light. I decided that I would share these thought-provoking words on the sidewalk each and every day; maybe they would help others as they had helped me. I grabbed a small notebook and jotted down my favorites, eager to begin my new mission.

Early each morning, weather permitting, I enthusiastically grabbed my box of chalk, a kneeling pad, my notebook, and headed outside. Before I knew it, each slab of concrete in front of my house was filled with a short inspirational message, a funny saying, proverb, or precept, differentiated in various bright colors. I experimented with different types of chalk and learned how to make my own chalk paint. When it rained, I looked forward to having a blank canvas to begin all over again. I did this day after day, not knowing if anyone even noticed.

As the weeks passed, something wonderful started happening—I noticed that people were stopping in front of my house to read what I had written! Some even took pictures with their cellphones. Neighbors that I’d never met before struck up conversations with me. I got to know their names and those of their adorable children and pets. One woman, Megan, brought over her cat on a leash! As I was writing, drivers stopped their cars to talk to me or honked their horns and gave me a thumbs up. One young boy made me smile when he cycled to my house and said that one of the quotes “made his day.” Others have told me, “Please keep going,” “We look forward to reading these every day,” “This brings us joy,” and “Hey, I loved that Bruce Lee quote from yesterday!” These comments meant so much to me.

As if this wasn’t lovely enough, I started finding surprise gifts on my front porch. I’ve received booklets of quotations, homemade treats, boxes of chalk, and handwritten notes from neighbors expressing how important my sidewalk had become in getting them through these trying times. One anonymous person wrote an extremely eloquent and touching note on a white paper napkin and left it on the windshield of my car. It said the daily encouragement had provided the will for them to keep going. I was so overcome with emotion after reading this note that I went into the house and cried for hours. On another recent occasion, a young man approached me and told me that my sidewalk “saved his life.” Those indelible words had merely escaped his mouth when I dropped my chalk and cellphone and ran over to give him the tightest hug I could muster. He was taken aback, and we both tried to hide the tears that were streaming down our faces. I promised myself at that very moment that I would draw on the sidewalk every day for the rest of my life.

I was in awe that an inexpensive piece of chalk could have such a dramatic effect on people’s lives. It made me see that we don’t need to perform grand gestures to change the world. Though I started out doing this for others, I realized that it was helping me, too. I felt more optimistic and had a new purpose in life. Having never taken an art class in my life, I also found that I have a knack for drawing cartoon characters. This added another dimension of fun to my sidewalk drawings, and to this day, I get requests from adults and kids alike. St. Francis of Assisi was correct when he said, “For it is in giving that we receive.”

It is hard to believe that I have written almost 1,000 phrases on the sidewalk in front of my house since I started my mission five years ago. I try to go out there every sunny day. I continue to meet wonderful new people either in person or on my Instagram account, @sidewalkinspiration. This undertaking has been an incredible blessing and has shown me that there are more kind, generous, and loving people in the world than we might think. We are all connected in some way, and we are not alone. Now, the anxiety I felt during the pandemic has been replaced with deep gratitude. As Angela Howell once wrote, “Weather the storm, because sometimes blessings come in unexpected packages.”