Not in a sappy way. More like a question I couldn’t put down. What is the origin of wedding rings? Were they meant to face outward, a signal to everyone else that someone is “taken”? Or was it meant to face inward, a reminder to the person of the promise they made?

The reason I was thinking about this is a couple of nights before I watched Legally Blonde with Becca and my mom. So much of that story runs on landing the guy who can buy the big diamond. The ring becomes proof. Look what I got. Look who chose me.

And culturally, it seems we tend to treat the ring like it’s for other people. Someone gets engaged and the first thing we say is, show me the ring. We want to see the size of it. The rock.

So, I got curious about where wedding rings even came from. The ancient Egyptians were among the first to use them. They saw the circle as a symbol of eternity, no beginning and no end, and they wore bands of woven reeds or leather as a sign of devotion. That’s the inward version. The love version. The Romans took the ring and turned it into something else. Their rings were often iron, and they were less about love and more about a claim. A public mark that a woman was spoken for and bound by contract. That’s the outward version. So, this tension I was feeling on a foggy morning in Canada isn’t new. It’s been sitting inside this little band of metal for thousands of years.

I looked down at my ring and thought, “What is this for?”

I actually didn’t want a wedding ring. I wanted to get a band tattooed on my finger. Becca said, no. At least wait a few years. Apparently, she was still kicking the tires...

After 14 years of marriage, I did get a tattoo. But not just one ring. I got 3. And not on my finger. On my shoulder.

I got Borromean rings. Borromean rings are 3 rings locked together in a way that’s hard to picture until you see it. Here’s the really cool part. No two of the rings are actually linked to each other. Pull any single ring away and the other two fall apart. All 3 only hold together because all 3 are there.

That’s why I chose them. One ring is Becca. One ring is me. One ring is us, the couple we make together. The tattoo reminds me of something I don’t want to forget. If we lose ourselves, if Becca stops being fully Becca or I stop being fully me, the whole thing weakens. The couple isn’t held together by giving ourselves up. It’s held together by both of us staying whole. Lose one ring and they all fall apart. Lose who we are as individuals, and we lose what we are together.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my wedding ring. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t feel like me without it on. And when I look down at my ring, I don’t see a signal to anybody. I see a reminder of the commitment Becca and I made to each other. To keep supporting each other. To keep making each other better. To keep growing together for as long as we get.

Once I started pulling on that thread, I realized the ring isn’t the only reminder I carry. There’s the nail polish I’ve written about before. That’s a reminder too. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Be the whole, weird person you actually are. I’ve been collecting these small reminders without fully noticing. Little things that pull me back toward how I want to move through the world.

Here’s why I think I need these little visible reminders in my life. When I got home from Costa Rica, something shifted in me. Down there I felt deeply relational. Present. Slow in a good way. Then I landed back in Maine, and my to-do list came roaring back. All the things I want to build. All the things I want to get done. And I could feel myself trading being for doing. I got sharp. On edge. When I’m deep in the doing, I can easily drift away from how I want to show up in the world. Leading from relationship, not productivity.

These reminders are simple ways to keep me in rhythm. To remind me of the person I am trying to be and trying to become.

So, here’s what I’m sitting with. What are the reminders in your life? The ring, the necklace, the tattoo, the purple hair, whatever it is for you. Are they there for other people to see? Or are they there to remind you who you want to be?

This Substack is a production of Heart-Strong, a nonprofit centered around a simple belief. The world works better, for everyone and everything in it, when more of us are pulled by love than controlled by fear. We have an open invite for anyone curious about what that world could look like. Learn more at www.heart-strong.org.

I keep putting “cottage” in air quotes in my head. The word makes me picture something small. A woodstove and a couple of bedrooms. This is a 34-room house looking out over the ocean. For its time, the wealth and the access it represents are hard to take in. I stood in those rooms and felt the pull of two things at once. The history was fascinating. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how much suffering was happening in the world while a few families summered like this.

I didn’t fully reconcile that. I’m not sure you’re supposed to.

But the thing that stayed with me happened at the visitor center. My mom got to talking with a woman there, and at some point, the woman mentioned that people believe FDR’s spirit is still at the cottage.

I’m not here to argue about ghosts. What caught me was the idea behind it. There’s an old belief that spirits linger when they haven’t reconciled something. When there’s a piece of their life they never made peace with, so they can’t move on.

Here’s what makes that interesting to me. FDR didn’t die at Campobello. He died in Georgia. People usually say a place is haunted because someone died there. This is different. Campobello is where his life split in two.

In August of 1921, at 39 years old, Franklin Roosevelt got sick at that cottage. Within a couple of weeks, he was paralyzed from the waist down. He left the island on a stretcher. He would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair and leg braces. If any place marks the before and after of his life, it’s that one.

So, I found myself wondering. If some part of him really is still there, what’s he sitting with?

It’s easy to imagine a version of him that never made peace with it. A man who looks back and thinks about everything he could have done if his body had stayed whole. The life he’d planned. Polio took the ground out from under one of the most ambitious men of his time.

But then I thought about what actually happened next.

This is the man who led the United States through the Great Depression. Then through World War II. He steadied a terrified country from a wheelchair he mostly kept hidden. A lot of historians believe his struggle with paralysis is part of what made him. That the patience, the empathy, and the sheer will he built while learning to live in a changed body became the same qualities the country leaned on later.

So, which is it? Did polio rob him of the life he wanted? Or did it forge the person who could carry a nation through its hardest years?

I think the answer might be in a Sufi poem, one attributed to Hazrat Inayat Khan. It gets at this better than anything I could write.

I asked for strength
and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for wisdom
and God gave me problems to learn to solve.
I asked for prosperity
and God gave me a brain and brawn to work.
I asked for courage
and God gave me dangers to overcome.
I asked for love
and God gave me people to help.
I asked for favours
and God gave me opportunities.
I received nothing I wanted.
I received everything I needed.

— Hazrat Inayat Khan, from the The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist

That last turn is the whole thing. We so rarely get the thing we asked for. We get what we needed instead. That’s the tension, sitting in a wheelchair on Campobello.

I think this is where love and fear do their quiet work. Fear looks at the hard thing and only sees what it cost. It keeps a ledger of the other life, the one that got away. Love looks at the same hard thing and asks what it might have made possible. Not because the pain wasn’t real. Because the pain wasn’t the end of the story.

I don’t know what FDR made of his. Maybe he reconciled it and maybe he didn’t. Maybe that’s why the ghost story has merit. It’s a question we’re all a little haunted by.

Because we all have a Campobello. A place where the life we planned came apart. And most of us spend a lot of time ruminating over it.

So, I’ll leave it where I’m sitting with it. When you think about the hardest thing that’s happened to you, which story are you telling? The one about what it took from you? Or the one about who it made you?

This Substack is a production of Heart-Strong, a nonprofit centered around a simple belief. The world works better, for everyone and everything in it, when more of us are pulled by love than controlled by fear. We have an open invite for anyone curious about what that world could look like. Learn more at www.heart-strong.org.

“How do you define suffering?”

Jonathan is the father of a good friend of mine going back to high school. He spent years as a minister at St. Paul’s Church in Brunswick, Maine. He’s thought about hard things for a living. So, I figured he’d have an answer ready.

He didn’t. He said it was a good question, and that he’d never really thought about how to put it into words.

Then he tried anyway.

Off the top of his head, he said, “Suffering is physical, emotional, or relational pain that pulls you out of the present.”

He told me not to quote him on that. Then he said I could. He just reserved the right to change his mind later. I liked that. The honesty of working something out in real time, instead of reaching for a tidy answer.

I’ve been sitting with suffering for a while now. Of all the spiritual traditions I’ve read about, Buddhism is the one that resonates with me most. It doesn’t try to make suffering disappear. It starts by acknowledging that we all suffer. Christianity, at least the way I’ve understood it, has leaned more toward relieving suffering. Toward fixing it. Buddhism just says suffering is part of being alive.

But here’s where I get stuck.

I have a hard time claiming suffering as my own.

I’m a tall white man born in the United States. I wasn’t born into a lot of money, but we had what we needed and most of what we wanted. Today I’d be considered wealthy. I live in a position of real privilege.

So, when I think about suffering, I think about everyone else’s. I see so much of it outside of me. People carrying weights I’ve never had to carry. Next to that, my life looks easy. I’ve had hardships, sure. But suffering? That word always felt too big for me to claim.

I said as much to Jonathan. I told him I didn’t think I’d really suffered much.

He didn’t let me off the hook.

He asked if I was actually addressing the suffering I did have. Not measuring it against anyone else’s. Just looking at it honestly.

And then we went somewhere I didn’t expect.

For about forty years of my life, I kept parts of myself hidden. I pushed them down. The sensitive side of me. The part that cries at sad songs and cries at happy songs too. I feel things deeply. For a long time, I was ashamed of that, because I’m a guy. And guys aren’t supposed to be soft. So, I kept many parts of me boxed up.

I’m only now learning to see that sensitivity as a kind of superpower. The range I can feel is enormous. The joy is huge. So is the sorrow. Feeling everything that deeply is a gift. It can also be hard to carry.

Jonathan looked at that and named it for what it was.

Living forty years with parts of yourself put away, he said, that’s suffering too.

I sat with that one.

And I think he’s right.

And maybe that is part of what suffering is. It’s any way you’re kept from showing up as your whole self. Through a relationship. Through what the world expects. Through a story you’ve been told about who you’re allowed to be.

The definition he gave me at the start reads differently now. Pain that pulls you out of the present. Hiding does exactly that. You can’t be fully here when half of you is locked away.

I’ve been working on a children’s book lately. I didn’t plan it this way, but it keeps circling the same thing. What it costs to leave parts of yourself behind.

Maybe that’s the work. Not getting rid of the suffering. Just stopping the hiding. Letting the parts we’ve put away come back out into the light.

That’s what I am thinking. And like Jonathan, I reserve the right to change my mind.

This Substack is a production of Heart-Strong, a nonprofit centered around a simple belief. The world works better, for everyone and everything in it, when more of us are pulled by love than controlled by fear. We have an open invite for anyone curious about what that world could look like. Learn more at www.heart-strong.org.

If you haven’t seen it, the setup is almost a joke. The hero, Dalton, is the best bar bouncer in the country. He’s also got a philosophy degree from NYU. So, you’ve got this soft-spoken, meditating philosopher who also happens to throw people through tables for a living.

It’s a fun movie. It’s also mostly a fight movie. Given the whole setup it could have had a lot more emotional depth, and it never quite goes there. It settles for the brawls.

But there is one line with some depth that has stuck with me.

Dalton spends his nights getting hurt. At one point he’s visiting a doctor, his future love interest, to get a knife wound stitched up.

She is looking over his long history of broken bones and scars and asks, “Do you ever win a fight?”

He responds, “Nobody ever wins a fight.”

I’ve been thinking about that one a lot. Especially as someone who loves to win.

A fight is built for a winner and a loser. That’s the whole design of it. Two people step in, and the entire point is that someone comes out on top. So, what does it mean to say nobody wins?

I started thinking about the fights I’ve actually been in. Not with my fists. I mean the argument with someone I love where I “won.” Where I had the better point, and I made sure they knew it. Or the email I fired off to prove I was right.

Did I win those?

In the moment, maybe. I got the last word. But in the long run, I’m not sure anybody came out ahead. We usually walked away with a little less trust between us. A little more distance. The scoreboard said I won. The relationship said we both lost.

Then my mind went somewhere bigger, and I’ll admit I don’t have this one figured out.

I thought about World War II. That’s about as clear a case for fighting as history offers. Fascism had to be stopped. People had to stand up. I’m not questioning that.

But did anyone win it? Winning that war still meant tens of millions of people dead. Cities gone. A generation scarred. “Win” is a strange word for that. Necessary, maybe. Right, maybe. But a win? I’m not sure.

I keep landing back on love and fear.

Fear sees almost everything as a fight to be won. It runs on scarcity. If you’re up, I’m down. If you get more, I get less. So, I’d better win. Fear needs an opponent.

Love asks a completely different question. Not how do I win this, but how do we both come out whole? It isn’t keeping score. It’s trying to stay relational, even in the hard conversation.

Here’s what I find beautiful about Dalton, that ridiculous philosopher bouncer. His actual job wasn’t to win fights. It was to keep them from happening. To calm the room. To defuse the thing before it turned into blood on the floor. The best fighter in the movie spent most of his energy trying not to fight.

I think that’s the whole thing. The only fights we ever win are the ones that never happen.

So, I’ll leave it where I’m sitting with it. Think about the last fight you won. The real one, with someone who matters to you. When you look back at it now, what did winning actually cost you?

This Substack is a production of Heart-Strong, a nonprofit centered around a simple belief. The world works better, for everyone and everything in it, when more of us are pulled by love than controlled by fear. Our work is focused on making love cool again. And we know we can’t do it alone. We have an open invite for anyone curious about what that world could look like. Learn more at www.heart-strong.org.

He stood in front of a wire grid filled with paintings. It was Friday, August 14, at Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. The last event for the FROM WITHIN art show and fundraiser.

He said, “I can’t believe prisoners painted these.”

His dad was standing right next to him and he didn’t say anything.

I chimed in. “All of these men are so much more than the worst thing they have done. Right?”

That was the last real conversation I had at the FROM WITHIN art show. 3 months after it started, it ended with a kid telling me exactly what our society and culture had taught him.

The Art Show and Fundraiser

Last January I wrote about buying a painting called “Mother Earth” at a silent auction in Virginia.1 It was created by someone who is incarcerated. I reached out to thank him. His name is Tremayne Seymour. That thank you note turned into a friendship.

And that friendship turned into something neither of us could have planned. A traveling show called FROM WITHIN, raising money for ArtVan, a Maine nonprofit that brings mobile art therapy to communities and people that can’t afford it.2

We opened at ReVision Energy in South Portland. Then Orange Bike Brewing in Portland. Then The Mix on Park Row in Brunswick, which is an art supply store. Then Reverie Coffee House. Then the library.

What I Kept Hearing

Over the course of the 3 months, a few hundred people saw the artwork. Almost every one of them said a version of the same thing.

“Wow. They’re so talented.”

I heard it so many times it started to sound like one long sentence. And I loved hearing it. It’s exactly what those men deserve to hear.

But sit with their surprise for a second.

You don’t say “wow” when something meets your expectations. You say it when something breaks them. Every single “wow” had a quiet assumption underneath it. That people in prison don’t make things this beautiful. That whatever talent is, it doesn’t live inside prison walls.

Then a young boy said the same thing without the filters of adulthood.

“I can’t believe prisoners painted these.”

He’d already learned what you “should” think about those behind prison walls. Likely not all at once. Little by little, piece by piece. He picked it up from movies and TV and the way adults talk about people who are locked up. He picked it up from a country that has decided some people don’t have value to add to society.

That’s what cultural conditioning looks like when you catch it early. It isn’t hate. He wasn’t being cruel. He was repeating what he’d absorbed, the way kids do.

His dad’s silence was part of it too. I don’t know the man, and I’m in no way calling him a bad father. I suspect he’s a great father. After all, he took his son to the library on a sunny summer afternoon and let him spend close to a half hour looking deeply at artwork created by men inside a prison.

But what you don’t say is often how this gets handed down. Not with words. With silence.

The Impact of the Show

In my opinion, the show was amazing, and unfortunately, the artists never got to see any of it.

3 months of people standing in front of their work saying “wow” out loud, and not one of them was there for a second of it.

I sent them photos. I wrote down what people said and passed it along. But it isn’t the same thing. It isn’t close.

These men made the art to help people on the outside. Then they had to sit inside while it happened without them. They couldn’t watch a face change. They couldn’t hear somebody’s voice shift halfway through a sentence.

They knew this going in, and they did it anyway. Because they understand the healing power of art, and they wanted to do everything they could to help others experience it.

When everything closed out, FROM WITHIN raised $1,500 for ArtVan.

That’s art supplies for 4 months of ArtVan programs. Roughly 400 people will use those supplies.

6 men inside a Virginia prison helped to put art supplies in the hands of 400 people in need, about 800 miles away in Maine.

ArtVan pulls up in a van and brings art therapy to kids and families at no cost. No fee, and no need to get yourself anywhere. They take out 2 big barriers that keep this kind of healing away from the people who need it most.

Follow the money for a second.

These men inside a prison paint to help with their own healing. They give their work away. And the money from it puts art programs in front of kids on the outside. Some of those kids might just be on the same path that led those men to Lawrenceville.

Healing downstream paying for healing upstream. If that’s not beautiful, then I don’t know what is.

It’s Over OR Is It Just Beginning

The show is over. FROM WITHIN isn’t. A show ends when the lights go out. A marketplace does not.

That’s the next chapter. Prints, shirts, mugs, and tote bags made from incarcerated artists’ original works. A marketplace enables more artists to be brought in. More art to get out in the world. More money moving toward healing, both inside prisons and in communities on the outside.

The beta version of the marketplace is open at heart-strong.org/from-within. I would love for you to look at what these men made. And if something grabs you, buying it helps us expand. More artists and more impact.

Right?

I’ve been thinking about my own answer to that boy for a few days.

“All of these men are so much more than the worst thing they have done. Right?”

I said it to a young boy, but I was really talking to his dad. And to myself. And probably to everyone reading this.

It’s a real question, not a rhetorical one. Agreeing with it is easy. Living like it’s true is a whole different thing, right?

This Substack is a production of Heart-Strong, a nonprofit centered around a simple belief. The world works better, for everyone and everything in it, when more of us are pulled by love than controlled by fear. Our work is focused on making love cool again. And we know we can’t do it alone. We have an open invite for anyone curious about what that world could look like. Learn more at www.heart-strong.org.

“In that dream, I was cradling my arms like this, and there was a newborn baby. And I was trying to hold the baby, adjusting my body, but the baby was floating and I couldn’t get the baby into my arms. And I believe in retrospect, and in that moment, that was when Lila died.”

The pregnancy had been normal, zero red flags. Then one Wednesday morning at 38 weeks, there was no heartbeat. The floor didn’t drop, Rob says. It disappeared. It vanished from beneath them.

Rob told me this around a fire in the woods behind my parents’ house. He is the co-founder of Sad Dads Club, a nonprofit providing support and community for fathers who have lost a child.

Grief Has to Go Somewhere

Grieving is part of being human. So, it should be simple to say that a father who loses a child needs somewhere to put that grief. But when Rob and two friends started looking, there was nothing for them. Plenty of support for mothers, which makes sense, and almost nothing for dads.

“There is not an exclusive space other than Sad Dads Club for dads where they can come together with like-minded fathers who have been through something similar.”

That absence is not harmless. Grief doesn’t evaporate because a man was never given a place to feel it. It waits. And it comes out somewhere, usually sideways. We see it in the numbers. Men die by suicide at four times the rate of women. We talk about deaths of despair, about men in crisis, about anger and violence that seem to come from nowhere. I believe a lot of it is grief and trauma that was never allowed a door.

So, this isn’t only about grieving fathers, as much as they deserve the care. It’s about what happens to everyone downstream when a whole half of the population is handed no way to carry their pain.

The One Emotion Men Are Allowed

Rob has a theory about why the anger shows up, and it starts with how boys are raised.

“It’s synonymous for men to just like all the anecdotes of be tough, suck it up, grin it and bear it.”

The only feeling the culture reliably permits a man is anger. So, a grieving father, with no room to be sad, defaults to the one door left open.

Rob doesn’t think that road leads anywhere good.

“What’s that going to do for you if you’re trying to repress and shove down all this stuff that’s just going to then erode you from the inside?”

Here is the part that stays with me. When Rob finally built a room where grief was allowed, the anger that supposedly defines men mostly didn’t show up. Guys arrive braced for it.

“We don’t see a lot of anger. We see a lot of openness. We see a lot of compassion. We see a lot of vulnerability.”

Men who came in with no intention of speaking find themselves compelled to, not obligated, just moved, after hearing another father say his child’s name out loud.

I don’t think that anger is the truth of men. It is just what leaks out of a box with no other culturally accepted exit.

A Net to Catch You

Sad Dads Club exists because Rob got lucky in the worst way. Eleven months before he lost Lila, one of his closest friends from college had lost a daughter the same way. Eight months after Lila, the two of them met a third father who had also lost a daughter. Three men who could say everything or nothing at all and never had to explain themselves.

“I had the fortunate misfortune of having someone close to me, both emotionally close and physically. So, I had a net to catch me before I fell.”

Then they realized most men fall with no net at all. So, they built one. On a cold, rainy night when the three of them were getting together in person for the first time, Rob’s wife had joked that they’d be sitting in the dark drinking beer like a sad dads club. The name stuck, and in March 2022 it became real.

What they offer isn’t a fix. Rob is careful to say nothing makes the grief disappear. What they offer is a witness. He borrows the phrase from Dr. Kathy Shear, who founded the Center for Prolonged Grief at Columbia University.

“Grief needs a witness. We have an audience of people who are not going to be uncomfortable. They’re not going to be curling their toes waiting for you to finish telling this story. They’re actually listening eagerly and they’re taking it all in and they are there for you.”

And once a man is witnessed, his relationship with the grief can change. Rob told me about a father in the group, an avid runner, who couldn’t put his shoes on after his son died. Another dad said he’d had the same struggle, until he decided that when he ran, that would be his time to talk to his child. That flipped a switch. Now running is how the first dad stays close to his son. The grief didn’t leave. It found a better shape.

What It Asks of the Rest of Us

Near the end, I asked Rob what fires we need to tend. He said:

“Why can’t we do the emotional equivalent of holding the door for one another and just assuming that internally we are all on crutches of some sort, whether that be with compassion, grace, patience, respect, just kindness.”

His answer wasn’t directly about grief. It was about the fact that we all carry things internally. You’d hold a door for someone on crutches without a second thought. So do the emotional version of that for each other. The person who cut you off, snapped at you, seems set on ruining your day, might just be carrying the loss of a child or grandchild. What if we all gave each other that grace?

He left me with one more thing, for anyone who has ever frozen up in front of a grieving friend and said nothing because they were afraid of saying the wrong thing.

“It’s okay not to know what to say. It’s not okay to say nothing.”

Ask about their child. Say their name. Even if they can’t go there in that moment, they will remember that you cared enough to ask. What is more likely to build resentment is the silence.

Why This Conversation Matters

Heart-Strong is about the boxes fear builds, and the work of stepping out of them. Some boxes are prison walls. Some are childhood conditioning. And some are the quiet rules a boy absorbs before he can talk, like the rule that says his grief is not welcome here.

Rob and the fathers of Sad Dads Club are climbing out of that box in real time. Not by getting softer. By getting whole. And when a grieving man finally has a place to be whole, the rest of us are safer, closer, and more human for it.

If someone comes to mind who might need this, a father, a friend, someone carrying something alone, pass it along to them. Because the stories we share around the fire have always been how we change and grow together.

Learn more about Sad Dads Club at saddadsclub.org.

This Substack is a production of Heart-Strong, a nonprofit centered around a simple belief. The world works better, for everyone and everything in it, when more of us are pulled by love than controlled by fear. Our work is focused on making love cool again. And we know we can’t do it alone. We have an open invite for anyone curious about what that world could look like. Learn more at www.heart-strong.org.

The ribbon was for a redesigned lobby. Not a new wing. Not a new building. A lobby that had been under construction for a few months.

And there were people everywhere. People from all over the community, including many people I knew from various parts of my life. I kept looking around thinking, all of these folks came out for a lobby.

That’s when I knew I wanted to write a love letter to CML.

I rarely check out books from CML. And I’m there several days a week. That gap is the whole story. CML is a library. It’s also so much more than books, and calling it a library almost does it an injustice.

When Becca and I were choosing to move to Brunswick, walkability was key for us. But walkability to what? We landed two blocks from the library. At the time that just sounded nice. I don’t think either of us understood what we were actually moving next to.

As I stood there, listening to people talk about their relationship with CML, I couldn’t help but think about mine. It might sound weird to talk about a relationship with a place. A building. But I think that is a critical element of community.

So here is a little story of my relationship to CML, told as a love letter.

Dear Curtis Memorial Library,

In December of 2024, I sat in your fireplace room and started writing a paper called “If We Want to Heal the World, We Need to Heal Men.” I didn’t finish it there. But I started it there.

That paper led me onto the Heart-Strong Adventure. The adventure led to Heart-Strong becoming an actual nonprofit. And that has become my life’s work, although I don’t like calling it work. I like calling it play.

All of it started in a chair by a fireplace in a building I didn’t pay to walk into.

When I walk your halls, I walk through my own life. Different rooms hold different things.

The fireplace room in the winter. The outdoor courtyard in the summer. A seminar room where the Heart-Strong board recently held our visioning meeting.

A few days ago, I sat down with one of your staff to learn how to use the photo scanner, because I had a stack of childhood photos I needed to send to the illustrator of one of the children’s books I am working on. That book will come to life in part because one of your people made time for me.

I’ve come to you to hear talks. Sourcing food from trees. Unpacking Wabanaki history in Maine. I’ve come to see the art on your walls.

Years ago, when we were piloting our first WILD (Wilderness Immersion Leadership Development) retreat, I checked out a coffee carafe from you so we could have hot coffee ready in the morning.

Yes, a coffee carafe. From the library.

That carafe came from your Library of Things, which might be one of my favorite things in Brunswick.

Each winter my wife Becca and I do Library of Things dates. We check something out and build a night around it. We’ve made ravioli. We’ve made pierogies. We’ve traveled to countries like Turkey without leaving town.

And as with all healthy relationships, the flow of love needs to go both ways. So, we give back to you too. We’ve donated several things including all my beer brewing equipment. I wasn’t using it. Someone else can use it now. And if I ever want it back for a weekend, I can check it out.

I gave something away and lost nothing. That is not how ownership usually works.

Your new lobby is beautiful. Your whole building is beautiful. But that is not what I’m writing to.

I’m writing to the community of people who make you what you are. The people on your staff. The people who volunteer. The people who sit on your board. The people who show up to hear a talk about trees on a weeknight.

None of what I’ve described happens because of architecture. It happens because a group of people decided a library should hold people, not just books. Then they went and did that, year after year, mostly without anybody writing it down.

And here’s how this comes around.

For the past few months, Heart-Strong has been doing a pop-up art show and fundraiser called FROM WITHIN. Paintings by 5 incarcerated artists at Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Virginia. It’s been to ReVision Energy, Orange Bike Brewing, The Mix, and Reverie Coffeehouse.1

The closing show is August 14, and you’re the one hosting it.

When I reached out to ask, the answer was an enthusiastic YES!

I can’t get over the shape of that. You gave me the room where this whole thing started. Now you’re hosting the last show of one of the things that room helped to start.

One more thing. August 14 is Valentine’s Day’s half birthday. For me that’s a day when we can actually celebrate the true meaning of love. Curiosity. Compassion. Connection. And not consumerism.

With heart and gratitude,

Jeremy

We tend to save love letters for special occasions. Falling in love. Eulogies. Romance and death.

Those are certainly great times for them. But there are so many moments in everyday life where we could express love with a simple letter.

Most of the places and people holding our communities together will never hear that anybody noticed. But they just keep showing up. The doors unlock. The lights come on. The library opens.

If there’s a place like CML in your town, I’d love to hear about it. And if you get the chance, tell them. Out loud. While they’re still there to hear it.

And if you’re anywhere near Brunswick on August 14, I would love for you to come to the closing show of FROM WITHIN.

I hope you enjoyed this love letter, and I plan to keep writing more. Because if there is one thing the world can use more of, I think it is love letters.

This Substack is a production of Heart-Strong, a nonprofit centered around a simple belief. The world works better, for everyone and everything in it, when more of us are pulled by love than controlled by fear. Our work is focused on making love cool again. And we know we can’t do it alone. We have an open invite for anyone curious about what that world could look like. Learn more at www.heart-strong.org.

He needed me on his right. He’s deaf in his left ear. If I stayed on that side, he’d miss most of what I said.

I moved over, and we kept walking. And I asked him about it. Had he always been deaf in that ear, or did it come on later?

Later, he said. It happened shortly after his first wife died.

Jonathan’s first wife Mel battled cancer for several years before losing the fight in 1994. I can still remember when I found out. It was the summer before my senior year in high school. I was at Boys State.

Not long after, he came down with what seemed like an ordinary ear infection. He didn’t have a fever, and it didn’t seem to be serious to his doctor. They decided to give it the weekend.

On Sunday, he was leading the church service and went to stand up from kneeling. He nearly fell over. The hearing in that ear was gone, and it didn’t come back.

I sat with that for a second, and then I asked him what I really wanted to know.

Did he hold any bitterness about it? Because it sounded like the kind of thing that could have gone differently. A different doctor. Antibiotics administered. Some small turn that could have left him with his hearing.

He didn’t go to any of those places.

What he said instead was that he’d read many stories, but they weren’t his stories.

I keep coming back to that line.

There’s a version of his life where the doctor takes immediate action. The antibiotics come. He keeps his hearing. He could live in that version, bitter about the one he actually got, replaying the small turn that might have gone the other way.

But that version didn’t happen. The story that did is the one where he lost his hearing the same season, he lost his wife. Holding onto bitterness would mean living in revenge and regret, wrapped up in a life that isn’t his. That isn’t the story he’s choosing.

So, he lives the story that is actually his, hearing loss and all. It asks a lot of him. The hearing loss makes the work he loves harder. He loved the small group work of ministry. Especially working with children. When you facilitate a group, you sit in a circle. And in a circle, he can only hear half the room. He knows what it costs. And he lives it as his own anyway.

There are a lot of ways to end up living a story that isn’t yours. You can lose yourself in bitterness over the one you wanted instead. You can live out a story someone handed you. You can live a story that society writes for you. Either way you’re somewhere other than in your story.

I know that pull. For a long time, I was living a story that wasn’t really mine. Heart-Strong was part of my own way back to the one that is. A year of exploring where love and fear show up in the world. Listening. Learning. Experiencing. And sharing.

And now it’s growing into something bigger than just my adventure. Heart-Strong is becoming a nonprofit. Not because the adventure is ending, but because it was never meant to be mine alone. The whole point is helping other people live their own stories. Not the bitter ones. Not the borrowed ones. The ones that are theirs.

We believe that when people have the courage to live their stories as their whole selves, everything around them starts to change. Families heal. Communities grow stronger. And the world gets a little closer to what it could be.

Jonathan chose to live his story as his own. No revenge, no bitterness, no pretending it should have gone some other way. And it’s what I want Heart-Strong to help people do too.

Stay tuned for more information on the next phase of our adventure and building Heart-Strong as a nonprofit.

Learn more at www.heart-strong.org

I jumped on Gas Buddy to check out prices. Gas around there was higher than I expected. Most places were over $4 a gallon. I found a place, the Whistle Stop, about a quarter mile off the main road. Their price was $3.70. An easy little detour. So, I took it.

Glad I did!

It had a great country store vibe. They even had the old-school gas pumps. The kind where the numbers spin as the gallons go by. I went inside figuring I’d have to prepay.

The woman behind the counter told me to fill up first and come pay after. She said the pumps are always on. I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced that. I remember it being that way when I was a kid, at the little store where my parents got gas. But I don’t think I’ve ever pumped first and paid after. Just trust and the honor system.

I walked back out to my car to pump some gas. While I was inside, an older man had pulled up on the other side of the pump and started filling up his vehicle. There’s only one pump for regular unleaded.

He apologized. He thought I had already pumped and gone in to pay. I told him no worries. I said I’d assumed I had to pay first. He laughed and said that’s not how it works here.

We got to talking. I told him I love businesses that still believe they can run on trust. The farm stands where people leave their vegetables out and you just pay. The places at the end of people’s driveways where Becca and I get our eggs. The community places where folks set out their goods and trust you to leave the money.

He agreed. When he drove off, I told him to have a great day. He said he definitely would now. Said he’d enjoyed the conversation. So, had I.

Then I went in to pay, and I told the woman what they were doing felt kind of amazing. Building a business on trust. She thanked me. She said they try to keep their prices low too, just to help people out.

That stayed with me. Because about a half mile up the road, right in downtown Farmington, there’s a WIC center. Food assistance. People who can’t always afford to feed their families. The need in the community was very visible.

And then a mile or two from that little station, there was a major gas station chain charging $4.11 a gallon. I’d just paid 41 cents less a gallon. That could be a $5, $10, or even more difference. And that difference could be one more meal on the table for a family that does not have a lot to go around.

That little gas station is what I would call community-ism. An active choice to center community, not capital. Treating your customers the way you’d want to be treated. Do unto others.

I’ve been thinking about this as I look at building a small real estate portfolio. I want to approach it in a way that leads with love. Put simply, I don’t want to rent out a place I wouldn’t be willing to live in myself.

Imagine if every landlord thought that way. Imagine if every employer did. People not willing to rent out an apartment they wouldn’t be willing to live in. Leaders not willing to create jobs or pay a wage they wouldn’t be willing to accept.

I’ve worked with big companies whose leaders make millions, own second homes, and still don’t pay their people a living wage. I don’t want to shame anyone. But I keep coming back to a simple question. What if we stopped trying to extract, and actually tried to add value to our customers and employees?

I want to build things that way. Not as a slumlord. Not even as a landlord. I don’t even like the use of the term lord. The Merriam-Webster definition of lord is, “one having power and authority over others.” I don’t want power or authority over others. I simply want to provide a good place to live at a fair price, held to the same standard I’d expect for myself.

I want to think of myself more as a housing steward.

Steward is an old word. Merriam-Webster traces it back to the Old English for keeper of the hall. Someone who looks after a home or a piece of land on behalf of the people who live there. Not to hold power over it. To care for it. To leave it better than they found it.

That feels a lot closer to love. A lot closer to community-ism.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

I’ve started introducing myself to people I don’t know in cafes, coffee shops, bars, and breweries. I invite them to share a snack and a conversation with me.

This is the first of those stories.

I was visiting friends in Hillsborough, North Carolina and went to one of my favorite spots in Durham to do some work. Cocoa Cinnamon. Three friends were sitting together at a table right behind me. They seemed like cool people. I had the idea for Sharing Cake but hadn’t approached anyone yet. It seemed like a great opportunity to kick off the series. And it turned out to be.

Meet Sam, Tariq, and Hannah.

Sam and Tariq are married. They’d recently moved to Durham from New York. Sam is in musical theater. She also works with a non-profit in New York that provides access to the arts for kids who don’t have it. Tariq works for a bio-data company in Durham. As he said, “He fixes the computers.”

Hannah had flown in from Bentonville, Arkansas for her birthday. She and Sam have been friends since their years together in New York. Hannah leads product design and development for women’s apparel at Sam’s Club.

Sam was the first to share a story. She told me about how Tariq had recently gone through an emergency kidney transplant. He was twenty-nine. That’s why they’d moved to Durham. It’s where he could get the care he needed.

I told them about my mom. She has stage four kidney failure and is on the transplant list. It’s been a tough journey for her. I mentioned that knowing I’d met Tariq and hearing his story was going to bring her some hope.

Tariq jumped in and shared how he got his kidney.

In August of 2024, his nephrologist told him he’d need a transplant. They did a biopsy. There was too much scar tissue to know why his kidneys had failed. Nobody could say for sure what went wrong.

Sam had posted online that Tariq needed a kidney. One of Tariq’s childhood friends, Ryan, saw the post. He’s a former Marine and a cop in Newark, New Jersey. Friends since kindergarten.

“I’ll get tested,” Ryan said.

Tariq thanked him but figured it wouldn’t match.

Tariq got a catheter put in. He did the training for dialysis. Before he’d started dialysis itself, Ryan called with some news. “I’m a match!”

1 in 100,000 chance!

Ryan was discharged from the hospital the day after the surgery. Tariq stayed longer. Tariq called the whole thing “just one weird season.” Six months from diagnosis to a new, healthy kidney. A kidney that came from a friend he’d known since they were five.

The conversation then shifted to Hannah’s work next. She told me she’d grown up in what she called Walmart land. Her family had worked for the company. Growing up, she was sure she’d never do that. She went to college in Fayetteville, then moved to New York after graduation and spent years in high-end fashion. When the chance to join Walmart headquarters came up six years ago, she was hesitant. It was a big change, and certainly not as glamorous as working in high-end fashion in NYC.

Then she told me about a trip she took to Louisiana that changed her perspective.

A few years ago, Hannah went on a shadow shop in the middle of Louisiana. She followed a single mother with five little girls through a store.

The mother told Hannah she had about $25 a month to spend on clothes for her daughters. She pointed to a dress on the rack. Under five dollars. She told Hannah the dress needed an overhaul. Better colors. Better prints. Better quality. If Hannah could pull that off at the same price, she’d buy multiples. And even better, she could make her daughters feel as cute as the girls next to them in $50 dresses.

A year later, the redesign hit the store. It was still under $5. Hannah followed back up with the mother.

“Y’all did it,” the mother told her.

Hannah said that moment was one of the biggest perspective shifts of her career. She’d come from the high end. She’d been skeptical about Walmart. The Louisiana mother showed her what the work could actually be. Now she calls it the most fulfilling thing she’s done. She gets to take high-end skill and put it in the hands of moms who couldn’t otherwise afford it. Moms who get to send their daughters to school feeling proud.

In many ways the story reminds me of my favorite Dolly Parton song, Coat of Many Colors.

I went to Cocoa Cinnamon to work. I left with three new friends.

Sam and Tariq shared their story without knowing my mom was on a transplant list. Not knowing that sharing that part of them would help give another person hope.

Hannah shared a moment that changed her perspective, not knowing I’d written about the same kind of shift with my father in a piece called Same Facts, Different Meaning.1

And then there were the people who weren’t at the table. Ryan gave Tariq a kidney, and in many ways a new life. A Louisiana mother asked Hannah for a better dress, and her daughters go to school feeling a deeper sense of pride.

We shared a cinnamon roll at Cocoa Cinnamon, but the stories were the real treat. I walked out both full and fulfilled, just like the saying said I would.

You don’t need a series to do this. You just need a snack and someone to share it with. I invite you to give it a try and experience for yourself that the saying is true.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org.

Carlos spent 13 years in prison. He’s an artist, an author, and someone who has given away 3,500 books to kids. He’s sold over 14,000 copies of his book, What If?, hand to hand, standing in front of the National Museum of African American History and Culture nearly every day for four years. He doesn’t hide from any part of his story. And that honesty is what makes him one of the most love-centered people I know.

This past winter, we sat in front of a fireplace at a friend’s house in Bethesda, Maryland. We talked about faith, fear, vulnerability, what love actually means, and why sharing your whole story matters more than most people realize.

The Caterpillar Story

One of the most striking things Carlos said was about caterpillars and butterflies.

“People always see the butterfly. But you have to be able to hear the caterpillar story. If you never share that story, people don’t know that they can grow or that they can become something great.”

Carlos lives this. He doesn’t skip over the parts of his life that are hard to talk about. He started with selling candy at 14, then selling drugs, then prison at 24. Not to shock anyone. He just believes that hiding your past robs others of the proof that transformation is possible. Fear says protect your image. Love says share the whole journey.

Love Is Vulnerability

When I asked Carlos how he defines love, he brought it back to prison. He talked about learning to love other men in a place designed to harden people.

“Love is vulnerability. Just being vulnerable. And when you do, it’s not a weakness. It’s a strength.”

He compared the bond to military service or a fraternity. You learn to love by being forced into proximity, then choosing to stay open instead of shutting down. That choice, made in the hardest possible environment, is what makes his understanding of love so grounded.

And Carlos doesn’t just talk about it. He lives it. He has over 3,000 contacts in his phone. When the spirit moves him, he reaches out just to say he loves them. He’s not worried about how it lands.

“I can care less what they may think. I know what they going to feel once I do it.”

Fear lives in what people might think. Love lives in knowing what they’ll feel.

A Box of Crayons

Near the end of our conversation, Carlos shared an idea that had come to him the night before while driving home.

“A box of crayons. Many colors. But the thing about it, they’re all crayons. People, different colors, different genders. You got everything going on. They’re all people. They’re all called to do the same thing and let’s get the picture done. But they all have to work together in their place to get the picture done.”

I love this because it’s so simple and so true. A picture made with one color is boring. The picture needs every crayon in the box. And no crayon gets to decide the others don’t belong.

This feels like something the world needs to hear right now. We spend so much energy sorting ourselves into separate boxes when we’re already in the same one.

Be Fruitful and Multiply

Carlos talked about the difference between leaving money and leaving impact. Money dies off in a generation. Impact multiplies. Then he reframed one of the most well-known verses in the Bible.

“God told you, or in the Bible it says in Genesis, be fruitful and multiply. It wasn’t just dealing with kids, it was dealing with ideas, thoughts. And those thoughts multiplying. But impact does that. And when you impact people, it continuously grow.”

I loved this framing. Most people hear “be fruitful and multiply” and think about having children. Carlos hears it and thinks about planting ideas in people that keep growing long after you’re gone. The 3,500 books he’s given to kids aren’t just books. They’re seeds. And those seeds will produce seeds of their own.

Fear hoards. Love plants.

Why This Matters

This conversation is part of my Heart-Strong Adventure, a year-long exploration of where love and fear show up in our world, especially in the lives of men.

Carlos’s story is a living example of what happens when someone chooses love over fear at every turn. Not once. Every day. In front of a museum. In a text to a friend. In a room full of kids holding books for the first time.

He told me that love flows through you, not just to you. And if you stop giving it because someone didn’t give it back, you cut off the flow for everyone downstream.

That’s a question worth sitting with. Where in your life have you stopped the flow?

If Carlos’s story sparked something in you, I’d love to hear about it. And if someone comes to mind who might need to hear this, please share it with them.

Because the stories we tell each other around the fire have always been how we change.

Learn more about the Heart-Strong Adventure: heart-strong.org

“Photos keep memories alive!”

No name. No explanation. Just the photos and the note from a stranger.

I didn’t know what to make of it at first. But the timing was hard to ignore. Because we’d just spent the last couple hours doing exactly that. Using photos to bring memories alive for a man who’s lived a hundred years of them.

Meet Grandpa Bill

Grandpa Bill just turned 101! To call him Grandpa might be a stretch since there’s no blood relation. He’s Becca’s birth mom’s sister’s husband’s father. But he’s just Grandpa Bill. Or as the family calls him, Grandpa the Great.

The nickname fits. He flew for Braniff International Airways. Flew all over the world, including routes down to South America. After he retired, he kept going. Downhill skiing. Road cycling. Riding his motorcycle. He was in his early to mid-90s when he finally slowed down. And even that wasn’t exactly by choice. He had a bad accident on his bicycle when he was around 94. He was out riding by himself. That pretty much ended both the cycling and the motorcycle riding.

I can remember one of his birthday parties at his son Bob’s house in Dallas. I think he was turning 90. There was a huge inflatable water slide set up for the “kids”. Apparently, Grandpa Bill and I are kids as we were the only adults to take the ride.

His motorized wheelchair has gotten him in trouble a few times for going too fast down the hallways of his assisted living facility. We joked that they should set up a racetrack outside so he could actually race people. He was all for it!

He’s also a man of deep faith. And I think that faith has been critical to his sense of purpose. It doesn’t have to be religious faith. It can be any kind of recognition that there’s something out there bigger than us. But whatever it is for Grandpa Bill, it has rippled down through his entire family. You can feel it.

That’s who he is.

The Photos

We had lunch together and sat and talked for a while. At one point, Becca and I mentioned AI. We told him that some people are saying the technological progress over the next ten years could equal what we’ve experienced over the last hundred. His entire lifetime!

Think about it, when he was born in 1924, cars weren’t even widespread.

We asked if he wanted to have a little fun with AI. He said sure.

I took a photo of him in his wheelchair. Then I ran it through an AI image generator. The first one put him in the cockpit of a plane. He liked that.

The second one put him riding a Braniff 747, sitting on top of the plane like it was a horse. He got a chuckle out of that.

Then while Becca was helping him with some tax stuff on the computer, I got an idea. I used to have a Harley-Davidson. Sold it because riding motorcycles just got too dangerous for me with all the distracted drivers out there. But love of motorcycles is something Grandpa Bill and I share.

So, I put us on a motorcycle together. Me driving, him on the back. Riding down 75 with the Dallas skyline behind us.

Grandpa Bill was over at the computer with Becca. He heard me chuckling. “What are you laughing at over there?”

I showed him.

His smile went ear to ear. You could see it brought him back to those days when he could ride free. He said, “Send that to my daughter.”

She thought it was real at first. Because it looks real. Which is its own lesson. AI can put a huge smile on a 100-year-old man’s face by giving him back a feeling he hasn’t had in years. It can also create massive deception. Both things are true. The same tool that made Grandpa Bill light up could fool his own daughter into thinking something happened that didn’t.

I want to be clear. These are not real photos. They were generated by AI. But the smile was real. The feeling was real.

What We Miss

Here’s what I keep thinking about. In our culture, we tend to look at people as they get older and focus on what they can’t do anymore. They can’t work. They can’t drive. They can’t contribute the way they used to. We build a whole frame around loss.

But what about what they can do? What about what they’ve already done? A hundred years of lived experience. That’s not nothing. That’s wisdom I certainly don’t have.

We’ve gotten away from ancestral wisdom in this country. The kind that comes from sitting with your grandparents and your great-grandparents. Asking them questions. Listening to what they’ve learned over the arc of a whole life.

I soak up every minute I can get with Grandpa Bill. I’m trying to do the same with my parents, my aunts and uncles. Because what they’ve experienced over the trajectory of a lifetime has lessons in it. If you ask the questions. If you actually listen.

And maybe we should sit with the idea that it’s not always them who don’t get it. Maybe sometimes we’re the ones who don’t get it.

The Note

When we walked out to that parking lot after the visit and found those photos on our car, I just stood there for a second. A stranger had left a stack of printed pictures, nature and flowers and art, with a handwritten note. Photos keep memories alive.

We’d just spent the afternoon doing exactly that. Using pictures, ones that didn’t even exist an hour earlier, to bring a man back to the cockpit and back to his motorcycle. To bring back a feeling.

One set of photos was made by a machine. The other was left by a human hand. Both were about the same thing. Keeping something alive that matters.

I don’t know who left those photos on our car. I don’t know if they saw us walk in or if they just leave photos on random cars in parking lots as their own little act of kindness. I don’t know their story.

But I do know the timing was something I won’t forget. I know that I will put the pictures on someone else’s car to play the love forward. And, I know that Grandpa Bill, somewhere in that building behind us, was still smiling.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org.

The thought had actually started earlier that day while I was doing some open water swimming. A sea turtle swam about 5 feet in front of me. And a couple of strokes later, I saw two amazing bright blue starfish.

Those made me think about the time I was lobstering with my dad, and we caught a blue lobster. According to the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, the chance of catching a blue lobster is roughly 1 in 2 million. That’s a lottery win by my definition!

We did set the lobster free. A lottery win for them!

And then I started pulling on that thread. Because there are all sorts of lotteries in the world. We just don’t call most of them that.

Time Is the Ticket

I was thinking about it this way. The conventional lottery is simple. You buy a ticket with money. You have a chance of winning something.

And as the saying goes, time is money and money is time. You typically earn money by spending your time doing something. Which means if I’m spending my time on something that doesn’t pay me, like lobstering, I’m essentially spending money. I’m buying a ticket.

Going out lobstering is buying a lottery ticket for the chance to catch a blue lobster. Going open water swimming is buying a ticket for the chance to see something you’ve never seen before. Like a sea turtle in the wild and a bright blue starfish. Sitting down to dinner with someone you love is buying a ticket for a moment that takes your breath away.

Every time you invest your time in something, you’re entering a lottery. The odds vary. Some are one in a million. Some are closer to fifty-fifty. If you’ve been paying attention to my writing, you know I typically put my odds somewhere between 50 and 100%. I wrote about that math recently in my Probability Math of an Optimist post.

Who Wins the Life Lottery

Here’s the thing that kept bouncing around in my head. I started thinking about the people I’ve heard say some version of “I won the lottery in life.”

They don’t tend to be uber-wealthy people.

Some of them have money. But the ones who say it, who really feel it, aren’t the ones always reaching for more. They’re NOT the ones whose life is never quite good enough. They’re people who’ve looked around at what they have and felt the full weight of it.

And sitting there in Costa Rica, looking at Becca, I thought, I love my life. I would wish it upon anyone. That’s a lottery winner talking. Not because everything is perfect. But because the orientation is right.

The Orientation

Maybe that’s actually the insight. It’s not about what you have. It’s about how you’re oriented toward it.

Some people have everything and feel like they have nothing. Some people have far less and feel like they’ve won. The difference isn’t always circumstance. It’s orientation.

And I wonder if you could actually start living life this way on purpose. Treating every investment of your time as a lottery ticket. Not in a naive way. In a being present way. Recognizing that every time you show up for something, there’s a chance of something happening. It could be a one in a million chance. It could be nearly certain. But you’re in the game.

People who feel like they’ve won the life lottery aren’t lucky. I think they’re just paying attention.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

Forrest Gump famously said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.

And when what you get is lemons, the thing to do is make lemonade.

But what do you do when you get cacao fruit that’s overripe?

Well, you can make chocolate.

Confused? Well, here’s a little story about what I’m talking about.

A couple months ago, my wife Becca and I were on a mini adventure, exploring some of the different markets in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. We went into a organic market just to see what they might have that we hadn’t seen elsewhere.

Our expectation was that everything would be expensive. It wasn’t. Nothing was horribly overpriced. And they had some pretty interesting things in there. Some very yummy, homemade popsicles, a few brands of Costa Rican coffee we had not seen yet, and CACAO FRUIT! The fruit that cacao/cocoa beans come from.

That is something I’ve been wanting to try for a long time. So, we bought one.

When most people think of cacao, they think of chocolate. Cacao nibs. The beans inside the fruit. But the fruit itself is apparently very delicious. The flavor is tropical, sweet, and tangy and often described as a cross between lychee, mango, and citrus.

We decided to eat it that night. It was dessert after our dinner of banana leaf steamed whole red snapper tostados.

When I opened it up, it just didn’t look right to me. There wasn’t much pulp. So, I did some investigating. I looked at pictures of cacao fruit online. The pictures I saw showed a lot of delicious-looking pulp. I was beginning to realize I might have a bad one.

I then took a picture of it and uploaded it to Claude. Claude said that the fruit appeared to be overripe. I obviously didn’t know what I was doing when I selected it.

That said, here’s where it gets interesting.

In the process of making chocolate, the fruit is often used to ferment the beans. That fermentation helps develop the flavor. And what had naturally happened inside our overripe cacao was that the beans had already started to ferment. They’d started to darken, which is the first step of making chocolate.

So, I asked Claude, could I actually just roast these beans and turn them into cacao nibs?

Absolutely!

So that’s what I did.

In our kitchen setup in Costa Rica, we didn’t have an oven. Roasting is not easy. I had to improvise.

I took a pan, put a strainer inside of it so there wasn’t direct contact between the beans and the bottom of the pan. Essentially creating a little oven in there. Then I covered it and roasted the beans for about thirty minutes.

Did they come out perfectly roasted? No. But you could start to taste the cacao. I’d say they were 75% there.

So, what’s the point of this story?

When I first opened that fruit, my thought was, we got a bad fruit. I need to take it back. That was a fear-based response. Fear alerted me. This wasn’t what I expected. Then love stepped in and asked, “What can I do with it?”

That changed my orientation. Instead of taking it back, I thought about how I could make lemonade out of lemons. Or in this case, chocolate out of overripe cacao fruit. Maybe that’s what the universe intended me to do. Maybe it was a little test for how well I’m putting this whole Heart-Strong philosophy into action.

At the time we were prepping to head back to the US. This starts with a 5-hour trek to San Jose. Becca would be making some breakfast cookies as it is an early morning shuttle. She decided to crush up those roasted cacao nibs and put them in there.

They were awesome!

And maybe this started a whole new exploration phase for me. Maybe I’ll start roasting cacao beans. Or even roast some coffee beans and experiment with that. Play with it. That spark of creativity never would have happened if I said, this fruit is bad and took it back to the store.

As I was writing this story, I got my Daily Stoic email. It was about the concept of Amor Fati. It is a mindset for making the best out of anything that happens. It is treating each and every moment, no matter how challenging, as something to be embraced, not avoided. To not just be okay with it but love it and be better for it.

Put another way, when life gives you overripe cacao fruit, make chocolate.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org.

But recently, I have been thinking about it differently.

Connection can be one-way.

I can feel connected to you without you feeling connected to me. Someone can feel a deep connection to a person who doesn’t even know they exist. That’s not a flaw in the word. It’s what the word actually means. It describes how energy moves in one direction. From me to you. From you to something. But not necessarily back.

Relationship is different. Relationship is always reciprocal.

You can have unhealthy relationships and healthy relationships. But you can’t have a one-way relationship. If the moment’s one-way, it’s not really a relationship anymore. It’s something else.

Why This Matters for Community

I’ve been working on a deeper piece about community. Trying to name the core elements that actually make community work. I kept landing on four things. Relationship to self. Relationship to others. Relationship to place. Relationship to resources.

For a while I was calling them connections. Connection to self. Connection to others. Connection to the planet. But once I saw the difference, I couldn’t unsee it.

If you’re building community on connection, you might be building something that only flows in one direction. I connect with you. You don’t connect with me. That’s not community. That’s an audience.

Community requires reciprocity. It requires something flowing between people, not just from one to another. That’s relationship.

Where Love and Fear Fit

This is where I think it gets interesting. Once you frame it as relationship, the love and fear lens maps right onto it.

Healthy relationships are driven by love. They make both people better. The energy flows and grows. Unhealthy relationships are driven by fear. They deplete. They control. They extract.

Think about what fear-based relationships look like at scale. That’s where you get racism. White supremacy. Environmental destruction. Systems built on extraction rather than reciprocity. Fear drives all of it.

And love-based relationships? That’s where you get healing. Growth. The kind of community where people actually tend each other’s fires.

Love and fear aren’t just emotions in this framework. They’re the quality of energy flowing through every relationship we’re in. With ourselves. With each other. With the places we live. With the resources we share.

The Energy in a Fight

My wife Becca has been reading The Celestine Prophecy. One night at dinner, she told me about a scene that had landed with her.

In the book, a character learns to see energy flowing between people. Then he witnesses two people arguing. And what he sees is that the argument isn’t really about ideas. It’s about energy. Each person is trying to extract energy from the other. The one who wins the argument gets a surge. The one who loses feels depleted.

That’s a fear-based relationship in action. I need to win. I need your energy. I need to take something from you so I can feel full.

The book suggests that part of our growth as humans is learning to stop doing that. To stop trying to extract energy from each other and instead find a source that doesn’t require someone else to lose.

I sat with that for a while. Because that’s exactly what I’ve been writing about. When there’s good energy flowing between people, it’s rooted in love. We’re making each other better. Like Becca and me at that dinner table. Great energy between us. Nobody taking. Both giving.

But when we come from fear, when we need to win the argument or control the outcome, we’re essentially trying to take someone else’s energy and use it to fill ourselves up. The other person walks away depleted.

What I’m Sitting With

I didn’t discover anything new here. If you look critically at how our society is structured, at the isolation and extraction and fear baked into so many of our systems, it’s almost impossible to land anywhere other than the conclusion that we need something different. Something built on reciprocal relationship rather than one-way extraction.

These thoughts are still forming. But the language shift from connection to relationship feels important. It’s not just semantics. It changes what you’re building toward. Connection can look like love while still being one-way. Relationship can’t fake it. It’s either reciprocal or it’s not.

I think community has to be built on the thing that can’t fake it. Relationships.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

It’s a simple question my Aunt Jill asked me when she called to wish me a Happy Birthday.

“Actually, I’m on my way to a memorial service.” That was my response because that’s what I was doing.

She started apologizing. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”

I told her two things. First, don’t apologize. There’s nothing to be sorry for. And second, I actually can’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon of my birthday.

And I meant it.

Fred Koerber was the father of a very close high school friend, Kyle. Fred was someone I was very close to as well. And the arc of our relationship is something I keep turning over.

He started as the father of a friend. That’s it. Mr. Koerber. Kyle’s dad who was also a coach. I spent a lot of time at their house in high school.

As I got into college, our relationship made its first shift. Fred was a teacher. When injuries ended my college basketball career, I started coaching 7^th grade basketball at Brunswick Junior High. Fred was the 8^th grade coach. He wasn’t just Kyle’s dad anymore. He was a peer. Someone doing the same work I was doing.

He also became a mentor. I was considering going into education, and Fred helped me think it through. He connected me with teachers at the school so I could volunteer in the classroom and learn the trade from the inside.

Many years later, when I moved back to Brunswick and joined the Town Commons committee, Fred was there too. For the longest time I kept calling him Mr. Koerber. That’s what he’d been my whole life.

One day he looked at me and said, “I want to get this straight. My name’s Fred. And if you keep calling me Mr. Koerber, I’m going to start calling you Mr. Litchfield.”

Understood!

In that moment I realized our relationship was changing again. He’d always be a mentor and a guide. But he was telling me something else. We’re colleagues now. In some ways, I was now leading him as I was the Chair of the committee.

This type of shift doesn’t happen in every relationship. Most of the people who shaped us when we were young stay in the roles we first knew them in. Fred didn’t. He grew with me.

The service brought together people from all walks of life. That’s what the loss of someone like Fred does. It pulls people out of their separate corners and puts them in the same room.

I saw Jeremy DaRos, who I played high school basketball with and lived with in Portland after college. His parents were there too, wonderful people. Dave Trigianni, probably my oldest friend. Mrs. Zimmerman, my senior-year math teacher.

She was talking to one of my best friends Scott and she didn’t even recognize me standing right next to her. At one point she said, “You and Litchfield, always causing trouble in the back of the room.” Scott just looked over at me. Her face lit up. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even recognize you.”

She probably always knew that Scott and I treated our math tests as more of a team-based assignment. My math skills were maybe a little stronger, and I’d help him out. She let it go. She made learning fun. That was one of everyone’s favorite classes.

At dinner that night, my dad reminded me that Mrs. Zimmerman was also a chaperone on our AP US History canoe trip junior year. A bunch of high schoolers on a river, a violent thunderstorm rolling through that night. She showed up for the adventure too, not just the classroom.

Were there tears? Absolutely. Tears of sorrow and also tears of joy.

People said, “Tough way to spend your birthday.”

No, it actually wasn’t.

Was it fun? I’m not sure. But I do know that it was something better than fun. Something that reaffirms what it means to be human, to have relationships, to be in a community where there’s so much love. It was meaningful.

In my high school days, my birthday included bonfires and all the shenanigans that come with being a teenager. This one was a memorial service, tears, laughter, old friends, and a community I’m grateful to be part of.

So maybe the question I want to ask myself every year on my birthday is, what am I going to do that is meaningful?

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

My wife, my parents, and I went to the Taste of Maine for my birthday dinner. It’s a classic Maine restaurant I hadn’t been to in years. The kind of place that’s a little touristy but the locals go too. We’d picked it because we’d read it was going under new ownership. One more visit before it changed.

While we were eating, my sister Jennie and her husband Erik called to wish me a happy birthday. I told her where we were, and she said, “Oh, I remember.”

Erik jumped in. “Oh, Bumpa. That was his favorite place. He loved that place.” Bumpa was Erik’s grandfather.

Jennie chimed in, “It was Bamp’s too!”

Bamp was our grandfather.

Everyone had their restaurant in our family. The one you’d choose when it was your turn to pick. For my birthday, I always chose Cook’s Lobster House. So did Jennie. The Taste of Maine was Bamp’s.

Sitting there, surrounded by all that nostalgia, I started thinking about how much those family rituals shaped me. Not just the birthday dinners. The weekly ones.

Every Friday night from the time I was probably 5 to 10, my family piled into our brown Chevy Blazer and drove to Lewiston for our weekly grocery shopping adventure. Dinner came first, usually at a tiny pizza place called Yanni’s. Maybe six tables, a hallway to a back door with a couple more. There was a jukebox in the corner, and I’d play “Beat It” as many times as my parents would let me. On occasion we’d go to Bonanza instead. A change of pace. And they had Jell-O, which I loved!

Then we’d split up. My mom went grocery shopping at Shaw’s. My dad, sister and me headed to Bookland.

My dad would go to the magazines and set my sister and me free to explore.

That was the part I lived for. Nobody telling me what to read or where to go. I could roam the whole store, pull anything off the shelf, sit on the floor, and disappear into it. For about an hour every week, I felt like I had my own personal library.

My parents didn’t have to do that. They chose to. They could have made us stay at their side or dragged us through the grocery store. Instead, they gave us room to explore.

That free range approach to parenting showed up everywhere. The woods where I grew up, climbing trees, following streams, building forts. The campground where I ran free with the other kids. The bike trips crossing the Androscoggin into Lisbon Falls. My parents trusted me with space, and that space let me become curious.

Somewhere in those Friday nights at Bookland, surrounded by all those books, I decided I wanted to write children’s books. I think I was probably 7.

Then life happened. School, sports, work, building businesses. The dream didn’t disappear. It just waited.

One of my goals before I turn 50 is to fulfill a dream I’ve carried for over 40 years.

I’ve written the manuscript for two children’s books. Now I want to bring them to life. I’m planning to self-publish, which means the Heart-Strong community will be an important part of how it happens.

So, here’s a little birthday ask. If this story resonates, I’d love for you to share it with at least one person who might want to come along for the adventure. That’s it. Just one share.

I write about love and fear with the hope of helping people step out of the boxes that keep them from living as full human beings. Whether those boxes are childhood conditioning, systems that center capital over everything that actually matters, or walls that were designed to separate.

These books are part of that. They’re for kids, and for the grownups reading to them. They’re for everyone who’s been told to put a part of themself away. And for every person who unfortunately did.

49 is going to be a great year. I can feel it.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

At the end of our conversation, he was recommended a book that would help shape some of my thinking. “Love” by Leo Buscaglia. He told me it was the book that taught him the importance of loving himself.

At the end of our conversation, I asked if Briddge and his wife Cherrie would sit down with me for a Campfire Conversation. They said yes.

This is that conversation.

It’s also the first Campfire Conversation that is not one-on-one. It is with a married couple to boot. And I think you’ll hear why that matters. Because Briddge and Cherrie don’t just talk about love. They work it out in real time. They push back on each other. They disagree. They finish each other’s thoughts and then challenge those thoughts a sentence later. It’s love in practice, not theory.

Perfectly Imperfect

I need to tell you something about this episode. About sixty minutes into our conversation, I looked over and realized my phone had stopped recording. Storage was full. We’d been having one of the deepest conversations I’ve had on this adventure, and it wasn’t captured.

We lost about fifty minutes of audio.

In the moment, I had a choice. I could get frustrated, hold onto expectations for what this episode was supposed to be, and let it derail us. Or I could take a breath and trust that the conversation itself was the gift, not the recording of it.

We regrouped. I cleared some space on my phone. And we picked it back up.

What you’ll hear in this episode is the first seven minutes that were captured, then me bridging what was lost, and then forty-five minutes of conversation that picks up right where the energy left off.

You’ll also notice the audio isn’t perfect in places. I have the technology for one-on-one conversations. This was three people and two lapel mics around a fire. That’s what happens when you try to have real conversations outside. Perfectly imperfect.

Here’s why I’m telling you this. One of the themes from the lost portion of our conversation was expectations. Briddge put it simply:

“Fear comes from expectations we’ve put on ourselves, on others, on our experience.”

And there I was, living that lesson. If I had held onto expectations for what this conversation needed to be, I would have lost something far more valuable than audio. I would have lost the friendship that was blossoming right there at the fire.

I got something better than a perfectly captured episode. I got two new friends.

Love as Mirror, Compass, and Symptom

When I asked Briddge and Cherrie how they define love, they each came at it differently.

Briddge sees love as something you know before you can name it.

“It’s like a feeling. You can’t really define it, but you know it. It’s like a connection. You can’t really describe it, but it’s there. It’s a lens. It’s a mirror. It’s the soul.”

Cherrie sees it as understanding.

“The reason why people have a problem defining it is because we don’t truly know what love is. For me, it’s more of an understanding. If I love a person, I’m going to extend that.”

Then the conversation went somewhere I didn’t expect. They disagreed, right there at the fire, about whether love is born in us or developed. Cherrie believes we arrive with it.

“We’re born with love. Real love. Authentic love that has not been conditioned or taught. If you truly love, that respect is automatic.”

Briddge pushed back gently.

“We do have love within us. It’s an internal thing. But that capacity within has to be developed. That’s why we have to grow into loving ourself.”

I think they’re both right. And that tension between “love is already in us” and “love has to be grown” is one of the most honest things about this conversation. It’s the same question I’ve been wrestling with since I read Buscaglia’s book last fall.

Cherrie also offered a framing I haven’t heard anyone use before. She compared love to an illness and feelings to symptoms.

“Love is the actual thing. The feeling of love is a symptom. It’s something that can change. It can go away. But true love is not a feeling.”

I keep coming back to that. If we mistake the symptoms for the thing itself, we’ll always be chasing feelings instead of tending something deeper.

Can You Stop Loving Someone?

At one point, the married couple dynamic caught fire.

Briddge said he believes you can make the choice to stop growing in love with someone.

Cherrie wasn’t having it. She pushed back immediately.

“On a romantic level, but you can’t stop loving me.”

Briddge held his ground.

“As a loving person, I can’t stop loving anybody. But in the relationship, I can make the choice to stop growing in love with you.”

Watching them work this out in front of me was something special. This wasn’t a debate for the sake of being right. It was two people who love each other deeply, wrestling with what that actually means when it gets complicated. And they didn’t resolve it neatly. They just kept going.

That’s what love looks like in practice. Messy. Unfinished. And still moving.

Leading with Love When It’s Hard

The conversation took a turn when I asked a question I’ve been sitting with for months. If I’m leading with love, do I have to love the people who are causing harm in the world?

Cherrie’s answer was immediate.

“You still have to love them from a humanity or a human standpoint. You may not approve of what they’re doing, but that’s separate. Ask yourself what happened to them. What makes them do that. Because it’s something.”

Then she shared a deeply personal story that I’ll let you discover in the episode. It involves forgiveness in a situation where most people might say forgiveness should not be given. And it demonstrates what it actually looks like to separate the person from the act. To love the human even when you can’t accept what they’ve done.

Briddge followed with something equally direct.

“If you choose to be a loving person, if you choose to be a person that leads with love, you’re gonna have to find love for them.”

No escape hatch. No exceptions for the people who make it hard. That’s the commitment.

Energy, Judgment, and What We’re Really Starving For

Toward the end, the conversation shifted to energy and judgment.

Cherrie talked about leaving a job because the negativity was changing who she was.

“My energy was not what it used to be, and my team was feeling that. I told my husband, I can’t go back to that place.”

Briddge was vulnerable about his own struggles. He talked about doing well around people but struggling when he’s alone.

“When I’m alone, my energy is bad. But when I find people, because I’ve learned to value people so much, my energy with people is super bright. If you interact with me, you think I’m the coolest dude. But when you leave and I’m by myself, it’s a struggle.”

I think a lot of people, especially men, will recognize that. The gap between how we show up in the world and what’s happening inside when no one’s watching.

Briddge also named something I keep hearing in these conversations.

“One of the most important things we can do is stop judging. Right now we’re at a state where everybody finds something wrong with everything. There’s no love when there’s judgment.”

And Cherrie put her finger on something connected.

“We no longer listen to understand. We listen to defend.”

I think those two ideas go together. When we’re judging, we’re not curious. When we’re defending, we’re not listening. And without curiosity and listening, love doesn’t have room to do its work.

Why This Matters

This conversation is part of my Heart-Strong Adventure, a year-long exploration of where love and fear show up in our world, especially in the lives of men.

What made this conversation different was the dynamic. Every other Campfire Conversation has been one-on-one. This was a married couple talking about love together. Sometimes agreeing. Sometimes pushing back. Always honest.

And I think that’s what this whole adventure keeps teaching me. Love isn’t something you figure out alone. It’s something you practice with other people, especially the people closest to you. It’s a mirror. It’s a compass. It’s perfectly imperfect.

Briddge brought his copy of Buscaglia’s “Love” to the fire and read a passage near the end.

Look around. Loneliness. Destruction. Despair. Briddge is right. I think the reason is simple. Not enough love.

If this conversation sparks something in you, I’d love to hear about it. And if someone comes to mind who might need to hear this, please share it with them.

Because these conversations around the fire are how we change.

On Thursday, May 21, the show opened at ReVision Energy in South Portland. And I still can’t quite believe it’s real.

4 months ago, this was just an idea. A conversation between me and an incarcerated artist named Tremayne about what might be possible.1 Now, it’s a traveling art show featuring original work by 5 artists at Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Virginia.

Organizing an art show across prison walls, state lines, and even country lines (I was in Costa Rica for a good chunk of the planning) was challenging to say the least. And artists had about 4 weeks to complete their painting. They painted 2 to 4 each. But here we are.

And the community showed up. On day one, we raised over $1,000 to support art therapy and healing in underserved communities. Proceeds from event sales go to ArtVan,2 a Maine-based mobile art therapy nonprofit. That $1,000 will allow ArtVan to bring their services into 4 different neighborhoods, reaching people who don’t normally have access to that kind of healing.

That’s just day one. And this is just the beginning.

FROM WITHIN is built on 3 bridges.

The first is the bridge of healing through art. Every piece in this show was created by 1 of 5 incarcerated artists at Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Virginia. Art became their way through. And through ArtVan, the proceeds from this show extend that same healing to communities on the outside.

The second is the bridge between the inside and the outside. It’s easy to write off people in prison. Society tells us they don’t have value to offer. But spend 5 minutes with this artwork and that story falls apart. There’s beauty, skill, and humanity in these pieces. There’s a tremendous amount of locked up potential and love behind prison walls. This show is one way to help people on the outside see it.

The third is the bridge to families. When someone goes to prison, their whole family goes with them. Staying connected is expensive. A single message through prison communication systems costs about an hour’s worth of work for someone on the inside. That’s the price of telling your daughter you love her.

3 bridges. Healing, humanity, and family.

Now, here’s the part I’m excited to share. Several of you have reached out and said you’d love to support this work but can’t make it to Maine. I hear you. And now there’s a way.

The FROM WITHIN online store is live.

All original paintings and calendars are available on the website, with 100% of the proceeds going to ArtVan.

You’ll also find prints, shirts, and other items, with proceeds going back to the artists’ families. You can shop by painting or artist.

And if you are in Maine or nearby, the next show is June 5 at Orange Bike Brewing in Portland. Come see the work in person. Meet the community that’s forming around it.

This show is proof of what happens when you follow love instead of fear. A painting led to a friendship. A friendship led to a show. And a show is building bridges.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

Around 5:00pm, the town starts to empty out. Restaurants go quiet. Streets thin out. And thousands of people walk toward the water.

By the time the sun gets low, the beach is packed. Families. Couples. Dogs. Kids chasing each other through the shallows. And out past the break, 50 to 100 surfers are lined up on the horizon, bobbing in the swell, waiting for one more ride before the light goes.

Nobody sends a calendar invite. There’s no announcement. It just happens. The whole community stops what it’s doing and faces the same direction, toward the horizon.

It’s one of the most natural senses of church/congregation that I’ve ever experienced.

One one Saturday evening, my wife Becca reminded me that I’d been wanting to capture this. Not just the sunset itself, but how crowded everything gets. The beach. The ocean. The whole scene.

After snapping a few pictures, I told Becca about a guy named Tony who I met while surfing in the mornings. He lives in Santa Teresa and is originally from Arizona. We met last year and remembered each. He’s the kind of guy who always comes over to say good morning. We’ve surfed together a few times. He catches waves like it’s nothing. Easy. Natural. The kind of surfer who could clean house and catch every wave if he wanted to.

But he doesn’t.

One morning, I asked Tony if he’d gone out for a sunset surf. He said no. He’d been at El Carmen, the restaurant right on the beach. He told me he usually likes to leave the sunset to the Ticos (i.e., the locals).

That thought sat with me.

Here’s a guy who could paddle out and ride every wave in sight. The surf was firing. And the sunset was amazing. But he chose to sit it out. Not because he didn’t want to surf. Because he’d been here long enough to understand something about the place.

Becca added a layer I hadn’t thought of. A lot of the locals can’t surf in the morning. If you’re doing construction, or working a shop, or teaching surf lessons, you’re starting early. Your window is sunset. That’s your time on the water.

Tony sees that. And he leaves room.

I’ve come to believe there’s a difference between visiting a place and being in relationship with it. I’m starting to think that tourists extract. They take the photo, ride the wave, check the box. There’s nothing wrong with that exactly. But it feels surface level. It feels like consumption.

Tony’s doing something different. He’s developed a relationship with Playa Carmen. He knows its rhythms. He knows who needs what and when. And he adjusts. Not because someone told him to. Because that’s what care looks like when you’ve been paying attention.

I think about that a lot in the context of this adventure. The difference between showing up somewhere and actually being present. Between taking from a community and contributing to one. Between fear, which grabs, and love, which makes room.

Tony could grab. He’s good enough. Instead, he watches from a restaurant with a drink in his hand and lets the locals catch their waves.

That feels like a love-based way to be somewhere.

I haven’t done a sunset surf yet. And I am not sure if I ever will. If I do, it’ll be on a quiet night when the crowd is thin and there’s room.

Because I think that’s what happens when you start to build a relationship with a place. You stop thinking about what you can get from it. And you start thinking about what you can give to it.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org