Part of my job is to visit the sites we grant money to around the state to promote mental health wellness. Many times, when folks think about site visits, they think about auditors and suits and big brief cases.
Me, I'm just a guy with a backpack and a little notebook wanting to collect stories. This week, I've been blessed to collect some great ones. And one of my favorites came with drumsticks. Not the ones you eat, but the ones you tap on the dashboard of your car to the sounds of Godsmack while you're making the 5 hour drive home from southwest Virginia. The drumsticks were gifted to me by three wonderful women representing The Scars Foundation. The foundation was founded by Sully Erna and his band - Godsmack - to help bring a change to the perspective relating to mental health, and the many issues that cause such profound pain. Sully says on the foundation's website: “Scars come in all forms. They are both physical and emotional. They’re traumatizing and make us fear what people may think of us. We are ALL imperfect in some way, that’s what makes us perfect and unique! EVERYONE has something that makes them insecure or embarrassed. Instead of hiding or internalizing them, own them and show them off to the world! Let them empower you so you can be a voice for everyone who can’t be. If we ALL wear our scars loudly and proudly, others will follow.” IF WE ALL WEAR OUR SCARS LOUDLY AND PROUDLY, OTHERS WILL FOLLOW.... That's beautiful, isn't it? As these lovely women from Scars talked about what they've been doing with young people in far southwest Virginia with music - told stories about kids being made aware that they are brave and strong and smart - boxes of tissues were passed around. Because when you hear stories about people with their own scars helping little kids with unimaginable scars discover that their scars make them unique and not damaged, you cry. You cry because you know you are in the middle of a story of hope that no numbers and no metrics can ever tell. The world too often tries to reduce us humans to data. To outcomes and projections and trends and things that can be neatly defined. But what defines us is our are stories. And the most beautiful part of life is when our stories intersect. When they intersect at this place where we recognize the beauty of imperfection in one another. And celebrate it. Celebrate it loudly and proudly. And we hug it. I have goosebumps as I write this. Goosebumps from the miracle of it all. Because there I was, five hours from home, buried inside the mountains of far southwest Virginia, in Duffield, a place very few people even know exists, listening to a story larger than mountains. It's such a powerful reminder that when you turn on the news this morning - wherever your news may come from - and you are painted a picture of a world that is dire - it is not. I have a little notebook to prove it. You may have to turn off the news and drive to the mountains, or maybe even just to your local school or homeless shelter or park, where you will surely finding people with scars gifting one another voices for their own scars. Sometimes it looks like a group of kids sitting in a big circle beautifully pounding drumsticks against buckets. Sometimes it looks like someone helping a kid with homework, someone filling another's bowl with soup, or maybe two people simply walking together on a trail exchanging stories about scars. But it almost always looks like someone with a gift sharing that gift with another. Because that is what brings our gifts alive - sharing them. Yes, sometimes that looks like autographed drumsticks. But most of the time it looks like hearts. Lovely human hearts. And I am here to tell you, there are way too many of them to count.
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Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
May 2024
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