Why is it that we so often hear from families who have endured an unspeakable tragedy…hear them calling out for attention, calling out to expose a horrible wrong, a condition long past due to have been resolved…so that another family, a mother, a father, would not have to experience the same pain, sorrow and loss that they feel? Why do they care? Isn’t their grief enough to carry without worrying about the rest of us?

I think there is a great knowing by those enduring such awful pain. It is a knowing that we are all connected. And those who cry out to be heard for benefit of others are really saying: ‘The whole of us cannot endure this pain repeating itself. So, if just one family can be helped, it will be worth it’. I think what they’re saying is, ‘Let’s stop hurting ourselves. We really will not survive unless this ends’.

This is an important message revealed through grief. I think there are messages that come from pain as well. Rodney King, in 1991 after having been beaten and arrested, said: ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ George Floyd, in 2020 as he was being pinned to the ground with a knee on his neck, said: ‘I can’t breathe.’ In other words, let me breathe, let me live, let me be free. Not perfect men, but messages from pain. Messages not just for these men but for the health of the whole.

Perfect messages come through imperfect men and women all the time. Maybe we should pay closer attention, listen beneath the distraction, beneath the judgment and hear with our hearts. I’ve said before, there is no us and them, there is only us. I believe this is true.

Much love always
Paula