Editor’s Note

THE POSITIVE BENEFITS OF GIVING BACK, returning a favour and paying it forward are values Reader’s Digest celebrates. Repaying a good deed with kindness to others can be a powerful force. It’s something our hero in this month’s Drama in Real Life, ‘Nature’s Deadly Venom’ (page 38) by Diane Godley, proved was possible even after the most harrowing of experiences. Not many victims of a deadly funnel-web spider bite would want to see another of the little creatures ever again. Not so Adrian Main, who saw the need to help scientists continue producing the life-saving antivenom that spared him from death. Today, he regularly ventures out to collect funnel-web spiders and delivers them, unharmed, to be milked to create future antivenom. The capacity to give back in this way has helped Adrian make sense of his ordeal – and being able to turn something unfortunate into good has helped his recovery.

With the flow of everyday life slowly resuming to a steady pace, the world we now find ourselves in has changed. Even if your slice of the world hasn’t changed too much, then most likely your perception of it has. Maybe, like Gina Hamadey, the author of ‘My Thank You Year’ (page 26), you’ve experienced a change of heart about a few things, and come to value the small things, which Gina proves, really matter.

This month’s issue has plenty of helpful advice (‘Watch What You Eat’, page 104), amazing adventures (‘A Message in a Bottle’, page 81) and a few good laughs (‘Phat Phil’s Road to Slim’, page 98). There’s plenty of great reading guaranteed to entertain the entire family.