Hey there.
Hope you're well.
Find a comfortable place to be.
To hear a story.
Take a breath.
Take a moment.
I want to take you somewhere.
Maybe somewhere you haven't been in a long time.
A school auditorium.
Picture several hundred middle school and high school students crammed into one room.
Different ages.
Different social worlds.
The invisible barriers that teenagers build between themselves and anyone who might ask them to feel something remotely vulnerable.
Here's the scene.
I had been performing and speaking for nearly an hour.
Poetry about identity,
About belonging.
About what it means to carry something heavy inside of you that most people cannot see.
I had done a piece,
A poem called Dwarf Planet,
About depression.
About feeling like you are on the outskirts of normal.
Relatable.
Close enough to see the warmth,
But nowhere near close enough to really feel it.
It's middle school.
It's high school.
There are various levels of engagement,
As there is in every space.
So many lives coming together for a few brief moments,
But all of us carrying our own stream of curiosities and challenges.
We get to the Q&A portion,
Usually my favorite part of the programming.
I open the floor for questions.
And what you never want to happen happens.
Silence.
Not exactly the uncomfortable silence of a room that is not connected.
More like the silence of a room still catching its breath.
Still processing.
Still deciding.
But still.
.
.
Silent.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
My imposter syndrome glances up from his phone,
Ready to jump in at a moment's notice.
Thirty seconds.
And then,
Near the center of the room,
One hand finally goes up.
She could not have been older than 14.
She stands.
She gets the microphone.
And in that particular kind of quiet that only happens when a room full of people collectively holds its breath,
She says,
You talked about your struggle with depression in your show.
She pauses.
And then her voice cracks.
Just slightly.
And she asks,
How did you survive?
And then she sits back down.
I've stood in front of thousands of people.
I've been asked every kind of question about poetry,
About trauma,
About what it means to be an artist.
But never have I been asked a question that made me want to have an ocean of time for an answer more than that question that day.
Not because I did not know what to say,
But because I knew that nothing I said in the next few minutes would be enough.
Because a question was not really about me.
It never is.
When someone asks that question.
When someone uses the word survive.
When someone's voice cracks in front of 400 peers to ask the one thing that actually matters,
Actually means something.
That girl was not asking about my depression.
She was asking about hers.
And the bravest thing I have ever witnessed,
Not on a stage,
Not in a poem,
But in a real room with real people,
Was a middle school girl deciding that the need to be answered was more important than the fear of being judged.
After she asked that question,
Something shifted.
The room,
Which had been guarded and uncertain all morning,
Cracked open.
The questions that followed were real,
About feeling like an outsider,
About what to do when someone you love is struggling,
And whether it ever actually gets better.
One question,
From one person willing to be brave,
Helped facilitate a massive impact I could never have made on my own.
That is what vulnerability does.
It does not just open up the person sharing.
It gives everyone in the room permission.
Permission to stop performing.
Permission to put the armor down for a minute and ask the question they actually came in carrying.
I think about all the times I have sat in a room,
A conference meeting,
A dinner with friends,
A quiet drive home,
Holding a question I was too afraid to ask.
Not because I did not need the answer,
But because asking it out loud meant admitting that I needed it.
That I needed anything.
That I wasn't in absolute control of my life.
That student taught me something I have carried ever since.
The brave question is always the right question.
The question that costs you something to ask.
Often,
That is the one worth asking.
I got the chance to speak with her after the performance.
Afterwards,
I sent her resources,
Encouragement,
Another vulnerable piece of my own story.
I don't know,
But I hope it helped.
Because she continues to help me feel less alone.
I think about her every time someone asks me why I do this work.
It's to create the space where someone can ask the real questions.
Her vulnerability did not just supercharge the empathy in that room.
It modeled what purposeful empathy really looks like.
Genuine curiosity and authentic vulnerability.
So here's what I want to offer to you today.
Think about a question you have been carrying.
Not a practical question.
A real one.
A survival question.
The kind that lives in your chest and surfaces in the quiet moments when you're alone and honest with yourself.
You do not have to ask it out loud right now.
But I want you to acknowledge that you are carrying it.
Because here's what I learned from that student.
The bravest,
Most human thing you can do is not have the answer.
The bravest thing is to be honest about needing one.
And the second bravest thing?
To look at someone in your life.
Someone safe.
Someone who has earned your trust.
And let them into the question with you.
You do not have to survive alone.
Whatever weight you are carrying,
It gets lighter when someone else knows it is there.
Not because they fix it,
But because they sit with it alongside you.
That is what empathy is.
The willingness to sit in the question together.
So wherever you are.
In the back of an auditorium,
Or in your car,
Lying in a bed in the quiet.
Know that someone in your life is waiting for permission to be real with you.
Maybe it starts with you being brave enough to go first.
Alright.
Hope this story helps you feel seen.
And to lead with more empathy.
Be well.
I'll see you next time.
