Starting off 2023 with a vow to let hope and humanity sit next to life’s sorrows
This is my first column of 2023, which means I’m taking inventory of all the lessons and light from another year of meeting new people and learning from their experiences and wisdom and setbacks (can’t get wisdom without those).
I started 2022 resolving to make more space in my heart for competing emotions. To stop pressuring myself to pick a feeling and then gang up on all my other feelings until they admit defeat.
I was exhausted, at the end of 2021, by a pandemic and a political landscape that made us pick sides, that elevated cruelty to new heights, that pitted us against one another and exploited our fears and frayed our nerves, that turned nuance into a weakness.
I went for a run Jan. 1, 2022, and a memory had popped in my head of a New Year’s Eve in my 20s. A group of us was celebrating at a Chicago North Side bar (I think it’s a health food store for pets now), and everyone spilled onto the sidewalks at 2 a.m. when the bars closed. We tried to hail a cab for what felt like an hour, and my girlfriends and I were in tiny dumb clothes, not even a cardigan among us.
My boyfriend at the time, who later became my first husband, ran — literally, ran — however many miles it was to my apartment, hopped in my car and drove back to pick us all up. It was the sort of thing that was reflexive for him, a combination of levelheadedness and generosity that I loved.
Our marriage didn’t
last. And as anyone who’s divorced knows, the anger and remorse and resentment and all the other junk you carry around has a way of crowding out the good stuff, even though the good stuff is just as true.
I vowed on my Jan. 1 run to find a more honest way. To make space for more happiness and grace and gratitude to live next to the junk. In all my moments, not just around my divorce. To let the true thing complicate the easy narrative.
I haven’t succeeded all the time. But I’ve gotten better at it and, more importantly, I’ve been on a mission to find people who are living, breathing examples of complicating the easy narrative. Who lift up beauty during chaos. Who look for joy while they grieve. Who remind us that life is complicated and gorgeous.
I found a bunch. Nina Boorstein, whose
son Scott died by suicide at age 21, started a movement to put goodness and joy into the world — not in place of her grief, not instead of her sorrow, but alongside them.
Scott was kind, and the movement, launched with the help of his friends and other family member, honors that. It’s called Selfless for Scott, and it pairs a growing kindness army with a different nonprofit each year for a day of service on Scott’s birthday.
“Scott always wanted to change the world,” Boorstein said. “That’s what he always told us. ‘I’m going to change the world.’ And this is how he’s doing it. He’s letting us help him change the world.”
Steven Dyme, the founder and owner of Chicago-based Flowers for Dreams, pointed me to Anzhela Kolesnik, a Ukraine florist who had just stocked her shop with fresh spring blooms when
war broke out. Kolesnik kept her shop open during the shelling and bombs — a small slice of beauty and hope amid unspeakable violence.
Dyme saw her story on NPR and, with help from his employees, tracked her down and wired her money to buy out her inventory so she could close her shop and head for safety — or keep her shop open and worry less about money. Her choice.
She received the money with gratitude, and heartbreak.
“Everyone needs peace over their heads,” Kolesnik wrote to me.
Flowers aren’t peace, and they’re no match for tanks. But they connected two people across 5,000 miles and a war.
“Our main mission is to help another florist,” Dyme told me, “another human being.”
And they did. Proving violence is no match for
humanity.
Jason Patera, head of school at Chicago Academy for the Arts, was diagnosed with a massive brain tumor shortly after losing his dad to COVID-19. The surgery to remove the tumor left Patera, a lifelong musician, deaf in one ear and paralyzed on one side of his face.
“I look in the mirror and sometimes it’s shocking,” he told me. “‘Oh my God. What is this face?’ ”
The surgery also gave his students an excuse to write him a box full of letters to read during his recovery.
“I’m reading letters from kids who’ve gone through far more challenging things than I went through or am likely to ever go through,” he told me. “And they’re offering wisdom and perspective, delivered with such kindness and compassion. It was overwhelming.
“If they’re engaging with the rest of the world with any level of that kindness and compassion? Our future’s bright,” he said. “We’re talking superhero-level empathy, and it will undoubtedly change the world, in small and large ways.”
Hope, next to loss. One of my favorite people I met this year is Chez Smith, founder of the Gyrls in the H.O.O.D. Foundation, a Chicago-based nonprofit that works to decrease period poverty and increase health education for young women in underserved communities. (H.O.O.D. stands for Healthy, Optimistic, Outstanding, Determined.)
Smith’s foundation provides workshops and sexual health conferences for schools, churches and community groups. In 2021, she opened a H.O.O.D. House for young women who need stable housing. Residents can stay for a year, and they receive therapy and other support services during their stay. The group also hands out free H.O.O.D. kits, filled with feminine hygiene products and other toiletries, at pop-up spots around the city year-round.
“I just want people to recognize that these girls are amazing,” Smith told me. “They have so much potential. They just need resources.
“They need love and encouragement,” she continued. “Just like anything you want to grow, you have to nurture it.”
Same with hope. And gratitude. And kindness. And humanity. Next to — maybe because of — all the other junk.
Happy new year, friends.