The last year has taught me many lessons. One of the most important is that people are there for you. People are not simply there for you when you are sad, when life gets hard or when something big is happening. People are always around and they want to support you. They may not know how, you might push them away or you might think you just "need to do this on my own". I call BS.
Our family has expanded farther than I really was ever open to in the last 18 months or so. I have always been the kind of guy who liked to think that he could "handle it". It never really mattered what "it" was, what mattered is that I took care of business. I was strong, independent and people relied on me, not the other way around. I was a rock, I was a symbol of stability, I was the place that people went when they couldn't figure out where to go. I didn't have a need for an extended family because I did not want to feel like I owed anybody anything. I never wanted to feel indebted to others and that stood in the way of my asking for help. It even stood in the way of being able to build a community of love around my family and myself.
At the core of every human is an innate need for community. Some people are able to repress the need, cover it up, ignore it and live as if it doesn't matter. Some people can live off in the nowheres by themselves and get along just fine. My wife and I are not those people. As much as I can suppress the need for community, as a family and as individuals, we flourish when we are bathed with love in community. As much as I can "handle it" on my own, when the weight is shared and the burden is spread across the shoulders of a group of people who care more about each other than themselves, each day is no longer about survival. The love and support you get from a community is vastly different. This love will take you from daily survival to daily surthrival and pretty soon, you are simply thriving.
I speak to this not only from a grief stand point, but from the aspect of training as well. My family has been my number one support in training and for their sacrifice I will be forever grateful. Training is not simply about a race, it is about remembering, it is about therapy for me and it is about families knowing that they are not alone. My kids and wife are phenomenal. Beyond them, we have been supported in many ways by many people. When Julie went out of town and I still needed to get training done, our community, our village stepped up and helped me out. We live 4 hours away from our own family, so dropping the kids at grandma and grandpa's house isn't an option. The families that have taken our kids have been incredible. The journey that we have undertaken is long, it is arduous, it will be frustrating, it will be rewarding, but most of all it will remind us what we are fighting for. My village fights for me. My village fights for your children. My village remembers too.
We are all headed down different trails, on different journeys, carrying different loads, but we don't have to do it alone. Chances are, there is someone walking next to you on the trail who wants to help, but doesn't know how to ask and doesn't understand what you need. They never will if you don't tell them. Please don't walk alone. Find a village, build a village, whatever you have to do, but don't settle for surviving when you can eventually thrive again.
I want to thank my village one more time, because they deserve it. Whether you have taken the kids, taken my wife, helped with training or food, asked me about training, been my mom, given us food or whatever the case may be, please know that we are extremely grateful. You have not gone unnoticed and we love you. So thank you.
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