Encouraging Tea Stories

Hi all!

I was recently writing a blog about how I use tea to build relationships, to the point that I am known on my college campus for “tea-dates.” Writing the blog, I realized I’ve had 150+ tea-dates in the past 3 years, with over 40 different people, sometimes as many as 8 per week. The conversations range in topic, but 90% of the tea-dates have been an instance where I or a friend (or stranger who became a friend) needed encouragement.

I was wondering if you have any tea stories you’d like to share? I’ll start off with two:

I mentored 2 freshman guys on my campus last spring, and come finals week I knew these guys would be totally overwhelmed with studying and tests. So I packed two mugs, some mate’ and my hot pot and trekked over to their dorm at about 9 pm. I showed up at their doors with piping hot mugs of tea, took a moment to sit and hear them out about ow stressed they were, and by the time I left both seemed a little more light-hearted. It was such a blessing I ended up repeating the process many times since (we call them tea-dates-to-go)

Tea was also a huge part of getting through my father’s passing last January. I was in my first week of my spring semester of junior year, and I got a phone call that dad had tragically and totally unexpectedly passed away. I was a horribly stressful semester, I was taking 22 credits while working 2 jobs and being a constant emotional support to mom. I didn’t have much time for myself, but I made sure to make time for a mug of tea every night; tea was one constant, one thing I enjoyed when life was CRAZY and hectic. Often, if a roommate or friend walked in on me crying on a particularly hard day, they’d instantly start up the hot pot.