Meet Me In The Center - The Price of Pain and A Path Forward

I’m seeing a whole lot and I’ve been silent for too long. I’m tired of seeing people be unappreciated, mistreated, and ignored. I need to do more, period.

As a human, you can only give what you have. I want what people have to be as close to their best as possible. That means they need to be happy and feel safe. That feels like a lot to ask during these times. To be honest, this is the healthiest I have felt mentally in a very long time since maybe I was a teenager. Poor mental health is a silent killer in our midst. I didn’t prioritize it for a long time, so when I gave what I had, I missed expectations. I was too proud to say I wasn’t okay, that I was hurting, that I was confused. I thought made me weak and soft. The truth is, everyone around me paid a hefty price. At many points, it’s a price that I didn’t want the people close to me to have to pay, so I didn’t want to be here on Earth anymore. And then I lost my sister - to the same stuff I had been fighting in silence. I knew that was no longer the way - I saw firsthand the damage that was done. I wasn’t doing that. I also knew that I still wasn’t okay. So I had to work, I had to forgive myself, I had to heal.

There is one moment that sticks with me. I remember my last day on the school board in 2012. People stepped to the microphone to say really nice things about my contributions to the community. Then my son Jonathan, 12 at the time, step and talked about how that opportunity helped me find my voice and how grateful he was to be in my life. I remember feeling a combination of honor, duty, and hurt. Honored that someone thought my voice mattered, a duty to do something with that voice, and pain from not having done even more.

That pain has been building and building for the last eight years, but really for the last 30+ years. I wanted to feel all of it because once it was time to go to the center of the ring, there was no turning back. I wanted to know that no matter who met me in the center, no matter what obstacles lay there, no matter what challenges I faced, that my why was right and that I was ready to fight to the end of my days.

I have realized over the past week that my time is here, NOW!

So, I am here, today, ready, willing, and able, to help everyone be their best selves and live their best lives in accordances with the following principles:

Bring My Best To Every Interaction

See Something, Say Something

Seek To Create Abundance

Prioritize Rest and Recovery

That’s what I can contribute to making people better. I hope it’s enough.

I am asking everyone who reads this to hold me accountable here. Life is a team sport and we need to do better.

So, with that, I have an invitation:

Meet Me In the Center

If you want to exchange ideas and debate

If you want to learn and grow

If you believe that giving is more important than receiving

If you believe everyone has something to offer

If you need to vent

If you feel alone

If you think no one understands

If you need help

If there is a way I can help your life be better

Meet Me In the Center

And we can figure it out from there.