“I’m going to end up in a wheelchair. I’ll never be able to walk normally again. I’ll never find a way to earn a living again. I’ll never be able to write again. My friends and family will abandon me. My husband will get tired of taking care of me and leave me locked up alone in a nursing home before I’m 40, where I’ll be ignored day after day and die before I’m 45 from infected bed sores.

“I’ll never get to be a mother.

“Why have I been cursed with this horrible disease? Why can’t the doctors cure multiple sclerosis . . . or at least give me some drugs that actually help? My life sucks. My life is over.

“I want to die.”

And then a friend prescribed a 29-day treatment for Walker.

Mbali Creazzo, whom Walker describes as an African medicine woman and one of her spiritual teachers, suggested that she give away one gift a day for 29 days in order to focus on what she could offer others. Taking her eyes off of herself and her fears would allow her to experience more abundance while giving away whatever she perceived another person needed in the moment, Creazzo told her. The gifts could be anything—a physical object, an affirmation, a favor such as a car ride—but Walker had to give with intention, focusing on the act of giving. Additionally, one gift had to be some time that Walker perceived as being in short supply in her own life.

Little did Cami Walker guess the extent to which 29 small acts would change her life, let alone start a worldwide movement that is going strong four years later.

Walker had already overcome huge obstacles before her diagnosis, including drug addiction, and she was very much a scrapper when it came to fighting for herself. But MS knocked her off her feet, at times literally, and she often had barely enough energy to get out of bed. She was in nearly constant pain, depressed, disoriented by a mix of prescription drugs. In short, she felt as though she no longer had anything to contribute to the world. It was in these circumstances that she began her 29 days of giving. Her first gift was a call to a friend who had been dealing with MS since the 1970s. After a rejuvenating one-hour conversation, which revealed that her friend was feeling lonely because her husband was out of town, Walker herself received a phone call - an unexpected contact from a potential client for her marketing consultancy business. Jazzed by how quickly her gift seemed to have been reciprocated, she undertook her gift-giving seriously from there on out.

Her gifts varied over the next month: change for someone’s parking meter, money to a stranger on the street, letting her husband choose the movie one evening, free consulting services and so on. Although she tried not to expect a gift in return each time, Walker found herself feeling more attuned to the abundance already in her life—to the kindness of others, to her husband’s good qualities, her mother’s tender care, the physical abilities she herself still enjoyed. Throughout the month, she experienced physical and emotional setbacks, but she continued her giving plan. Eventually, she decided to share it with a few friends and then to start a website where people could journal about their own giving. At the end of the 29 days, she saw so many improvements in numerous areas of her life (including her physical ailments) that she determined to start the giving cycle all over.

Walker references many spiritual disciplines in her writing. She has written her book in such a way that readers from just about any faith path should be able to take away something of value. We all give, most of us every day (and, as Mbali Creazzo is quoted as saying, “Giving of any kind is taking a positive action that begins the process of change”), but the book suggests that giving with intention—not as an incidental act—is crucial to experiencing the benefits of this giving plan. She includes a letter from Creazzo that gives some background on the 29-day plan (which originated in an African ritual), suggests nine lessons Creazzo took away from completing the plan herself the first time, and offers several topics for reflection during the giving plan.

Walker is brutally honest about the physical, psychological and emotional impacts of MS in her life. She does not candy-coat her symptoms or the challenges they present. Yet her book offers hope—especially for people trapped in a mindset of scarcity. For the author, a month of giving did, indeed, change her life.