One of the questions I still get, often and honestly, is this:
What do you think your life would’ve been like if your mother hadn’t died when you were 8 years old?
My honest answer?
I don’t know.
I don’t know who I’d be.
I don’t know where I’d be.
I only know what I had to survive to become who I am.
I believe I had potential buried deep inside me, just like so many others do.
But potential doesn’t rise in isolation.
Environment is either wind at your back or wind in your face.
And after my mom died, the winds didn’t change in my favor.
What followed wasn’t healing, it was more pain.
Sexual abuse turned into chronic physical and emotional abuse.
The hunger for food turned into a deeper hunger, for safety, for shelter from pain.
I remember being hit in the face with an oversized belt buckle, lying on the floor with my will to live all but gone.
I wanted to be dead, or invisible.
But maybe that’s not the right question.
Maybe the better question is:
What if my mom had a support system?
What if she had someone to walk with her through addiction, through poverty, through grief?
What if someone had seen her pain before it became mine?
What if someone had seen my pain before I learned to hide it?
What if someone had come alongside us, not to fix us, but to be present, consistent, and real?
What if my grief had been held?
What if my depression had been met with compassion?
What if my self-sabotage had been named for what it was, a wound, not a weakness?
What if we caught them…
Before the world broke them?
Before the silence set in?
While the light was still flickering inside?
I didn’t know how to ask for help.
I didn’t know what healing looked like.
I didn’t know peace was even possible.
But I know now what’s possible when we show up early.
Because the stuff that happens to us as kids doesn’t just disappear.
We carry it.
Into our relationships.
Into our parenting.
Into our leadership.
Into our workplaces.
Into how we see ourselves, and how we see others.
I see it now, how one adult, one moment of care, one consistent voice can become the difference between surviving and thriving.
I didn’t get the help I needed.
But I want to be part of making sure the next child does.
I want to be the wind at their back.
Because when we catch kids young, we help unleash human potential young.
And the earlier potential is realized, the more value it creates, for all of us.
The more and longer that potential is realized…
The more value your family receives.
The more value we get as a society.
The more value we experience in our workplaces, in our teams, and in our communities.
Because when we catch the next one, we don’t just save a life.
We multiply talent.
We strengthen futures.
We change the game.
What if my mother hadn’t died when I was 8?
I don’t know.
But I do know this:
We can still catch the next one.
We just have to choose to look.
We just have to choose to care.
We just have to choose to show up.
And if we do?
We won’t just change their story.
We’ll change ours too.