Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
But there is a discomfort that surrounds grief. It makes even the most well-intentioned people unsure of what to say. And so many of the freshly bereaved end up feeling even more alone.
I wasn't prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn't just sadness, and it wasn't linear. Somehow I'd thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better - like getting over the flu. That's not how it was.
I think about my mother every day. But usually the thoughts are fleeting - she crosses my mind like a spring cardinal that flies past the edge of your eye: startling, luminous, lovely. . . gone.
One word I had throughout the first year and a half of my mother's death was 'unmoored. ' I felt that I had no anchor, that I had no home in the world.
I was not raised with religion, and I had no faith before my mother died. On the other hand, when she died, I did not immediately feel she was "gone. " I don't believe she is in something like heaven, but I also feel that we don't understand much about the nature of the universe. So I hold on to that uncertainty, at times.
Grief is a bad moon, a sleeper wave. It's like having an inner combatant, a saboteur who, at the slightest change in the sunlight, or at the first notes of a jingle for a dog food commercial, will flick the memory switch, bringing tears to your eyes.
I believe mustard to be one of the most amazing condiments.
The first myth to dispel is that Africa is not a country. It's made up of 53 different countries. So to say 'invest in Africa' is a no-go. It's meaningless.
There is somebody in our lives that we could call the Energizer Bunny and we admire for those qualities.
The key is in remaining just aloof enough from a painting so that you know when to stop.