Tragedy in its many forms; heartbreak, death, illness, divorce; can be a wonderful thing.

With tragedy comes catharsis; a purging of emotion, a cleansing…

This cleansing creates space, an opening for newness…

A new perspective, a reevaluation, a realization…

I recently lost my Dad. I grieved for a long time, and cried so hard that I felt I had nothing left in me.

I felt a huge space inside of me, whether that feeling was good or bad, it was space; and within it, I felt I had room to think.

I realized two very important things.

I realized the reality of mortality… which brings a strange awakening.

It’s easy to sleepwalk through life; to become stuck in a routine so fast it becomes your existence, and one you didn’t even choose. It’s a sort of trance, a half-conscious state of complete mental absorption that is on a playback loop.

However, when we are faced with the reality of mortality, we remember our unrealized dreams, or uncultivated relationships…

And the thought of uncultivated relationships brought me to my second realization…

I realized the biological intertwinement of humans.

When you strip away our differences, we are all the same at our core. We all need love to thrive and survive. When you view others in this way, the walls that hinder connectedness fade away. Fear and judgement are replaced with connectedness and love.

And so, with my newfound open space and realizations, I made a promise to myself.

Andreas Weber, German biologist, says life is a part of the gift economy. You are given this enormous gift; LIFE. You enrich it as best as you can, and then you give it back.

Was I enriching the lives of those around me? If I could enrich the lives of those around me better, what could I do?

I made a promise to enrich life to the best of my ability; to do my best to enrich those around me; my friends, my family, my clients.

I want us to breakdown walls of fear and judgment, so we can feel connected, so we can all find the one, true thing that we all need to thrive and survive; love.