faith in humanity restored

Stories that involve air travel don’t usually restore our faith in humanity. You’re way more likely to find headlines featuring lost or stolen luggage, rude passengers or unhelpful staff. But every so often, one will come around to remind us that kindness does, in fact, exist…even 40,000 feet up in the air. And when they do appear, they simply must be shared.

In an exclusive in PEOPLE, Gabrielle G., a 27-year-old solo mom who goes by @notaregularnanny on social media, shared how she had been traveling with her 18-month-old son back home to Florida from a Fourth of July family visit in Kansas City, Mo., when her flight got canceled due to an IT outage.

This would be the first of a whole slew of unfortunate circumstances. For Gabrielle was able to rebook a connecting flight through Detroit, however, she and her son were booted off the new flight due to a spacing snafu.

This would be enough for anyone to lose hope, let alone a young single mom taking care of a child all by herself. But in that moment, Gabrielle was about to learn she wasn’t as alone as she thought.

Just as she was about to exit the plane, another mom offered to put her 2-year-old son on her lap so that Gabrielle and her child could take the extra seat. “We ended up getting a seat on that plane after all because of her,” she told People.

But the kindness didn’t stop there. Gabrielle would tell PEOPLE that even though her journey home would include a few more obstacles, like another cancelled flight once she landed in Detroit, as well as no available rental cars or hotel rooms, the strangers she’d meet along the way would help that journey ultimately be an incredibly heartwarming one.

In a now viral video, Gabrielle listed off those helpful strangers—from the old man who helped her son up to look out the airplane window, to the family that entertained him while they were stuck on the tarmac for hours, to the Uber driver who let them stay in his car while they waited for their train so they’d stay safe, and more.

So many viewers chimed in to share how simply watching the clip restored their own faith in humanity as well.

“My childhood trauma has taught me to trust NOBODY, I cried my eyes out watching this because [of this] exchange of compassion and love by strangers! Thank you for healing a part of me!” one person wrote.

Another said, “If I’ve learned anything recently, it’s that humanity isn’t as awful as it’s currently portrayed to be. May we all take care of one another.”

Others noted how this was a prime example of how “the village” doesn’t always have to be our close friends and family. Rather, it can be, one one person put it, “the people you pass by throughout life.”

Another person wrote, “Be someone’s village! I will always offer to help keep tabs on a kiddo or play with them while a parent handles something. It takes so little effort to choose kindness, help, listen, entertain.”

Another simply dubbed this video as “hopecore,” which feels so appropo. May all our feeds, and our hearts be filled with more hopecore just like this.