Mom's Random Act Of Kindness To Strangers Who Bullied Her Goes Viral

You’ve heard the phrase “kill ’em with kindness” but I doubt you’ve ever seen someone do it like this.

A Michigan mom, Diane Hoffmeyer, was standing in line with her 22-month-old daughter at Tim Horton’s this week when she overheard two women behind her whispering some awfully rude things. They were commenting on her hair, her weight, and at one point even called her a “retarded lard ass.” Apologies to infinity and beyond that you even had to read those awful words, let alone that this poor woman had to hear them spoken about her.

Hoffmeyer, who’s lost 177 pounds over the past 22 months, says she was extremely hurt by the things she heard. Instead of getting upset or lashing out, though, she did something none of us would expect: she pulled a random act of kindness on those assholes and paid for their coffees.

She shared the whole story in a now-removed post on her town’s official Facebook page:

Hoffmeyer’s post went massively viral, racking up over 224,000 likes and resulting in over 94,000 friend requests before it was pulled down. She told the Times Herald, “One positive action in a negative moment has caused a tsunami of friendship for me with moms that are going through the same thing.”

She also said she wanted to stay positive in the moment so she could set a good example for her daughter. Says Hoffmeyer, “My two-year-old daughter is a mini-me and she mimics everything I do. I wanted to do the right thing so when she’s old enough she’ll know the right thing to do.”

In that situation, many of us would have been tempted to either tell those ladies off or just collapse into a puddle and cry hysterically, but what Hoffmeyer did is actually so much better. She stuck it to those women in the absolute nicest way possible, and she taught her daughter a multitude of lessons in the process. Now her daughter will know how to handle bullies with poise and grace, how powerful kindness actually is, and how to rise above the hurtful, negative things people sometimes say.

There are plenty of bullies and mean people in the world, but Hoffmeyer and those like her are an amazing reminder that good people do exist. Hopefully her kindness and her story inspire others as much as they’ve inspired me, and together we can create a giant wave of kindness that wipes out all the hate.