The day after the presidential debate, I took a walk with my daughter and a dear friend around the park I adore as though it were a family member. We talked about the night before with anguish and panic, as though someone had died or was about to.

How could things have gotten this bad and no one had alerted us?

Or had we simply fallen asleep yet again, despite all signs everywhere pointing to the fact that humans are now lobsters in the pot on a slow, yet rumbling boil? A pot that simmers not only with climate change and hundreds of years of inequity, greed and pain, but also a democracy that somehow cannot elevate and support the next generation of leaders of substance.

But until it affects you, until it slaps you in the face right in your very own living room, it doesn’t matter.

Because are all waiting for the grownups to show up, to intervene. But we are the grownups and it is us who must intervene. The life we are gifted here could be so much better for all if we did the math problem that might not add up, but solves so much: taking less so that others have what they need ultimately equals you being happier, you thriving in place.

So what do we do in this moment when we have been jolted awake? We must vote and we must do more than that. This great article in Teen Vogue (a good pub for teens and all ages) explains that making a difference in times like these is about voting AND: voting and joining a campaign, voting and taking a class to overcome bias, voting and shopping consciously, voting and hosting a community potluck. It’s about showing up to the polls and then civically engaging all year long.

I just signed up to do voter outreach in my area. I will vote. I will send you this message today and ask you to vote and…

As we walked around the park and lamented, we were confronted with this yarn creation someone had taken the time to make and leave here on this tree (which actually might not good for the tree, but that’s another matter). An artist or a child or a regular person looking to brighten the day of a total stranger like me, wrapped this old pill bottle in bright green yarn and stuffed it with pipe cleaners bent into the shape of flowers and displayed it for me to find, for me to remember the beauty and generosity of humans and what we are capable of when we remember our humanity.

I’m grateful for this reminder and I share with it you. It is the hope, even at this eleventh hour, that anything is still possible when we hold onto to the best part of being human, the thing that separates us from other animals: our empathy, our courage, our ability to rise up and do the hardest work which is to change, to take action, to save the day.

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She had me at 23, was divorced by 26 and raised me mostly alone, and much later, my sister too. Without the benefit of a traditional education, she worked her way up at Disney to vice president of business affairs, spending 10-hour days doing deals and zooming laps around that office until past the age of seventy, when she finally retired.

We talk everyday: she is still sharper than me and just as beautiful, but these days what I notice more is how much she makes me laugh, and also how much she roots for me.

In all my thinking about connection lately, I’ve especially been thinking about mothers. As I sit here, perched on the edge of an emptying nest, I find myself bothering everyone: I nag my young adults as I attempt to let go of them while also trying to keep them safe/make sure they know all the things and then I nag my mom as I attempt to hold onto her, to keep her safe/make sure I know all the things.

It’s a lot.

More than anything, it’s a kaleidoscope, this middle place. In the faces of these people I love so deeply, I see the shapes of all the people they’ve been, filtered through the light of who they are now. In my 17 and 20-year-olds, I catch glimpses of their former delightful baby-ness, them as an impetuous toddler, a serious elementary school kid, a middle school athlete. In my mother, by turns I spy the loving caregiver, the supportive friend, the trailblazing powerhouse who showed me what’s possible with smarts, grit and perseverance.

May these primal connections buoy us. May we see our past and our future all mingled up - with all the messiness of life and being human - and take it up in our arms like we would the toddler we once were or the toddler we once had and embrace it, loving with all our hearts, not holding back, not waiting for later.

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My son Finn, now 17, made this drawing when he was five or six. I have always felt so much looking at it that I put it in a frame over my desk.

When he brought the picture home from school that day, I remember feeling guilt. I assumed I was the giant strawberry and he was the spider on the cliff; I was clearly floating out to the sea of work and obligations, a world away from him. I couldn’t stop staring at the tiny spider with only six spindly legs (he wasn’t even done growing yet!) all alone, levitating on a cliff, yelling “I LOVE YOU” to the strawberry. I noticed an earlier version of the speech bubble had been erased and I pictured Finn’s little chubby fingers erasing, then redrawing it to better depict the magnitude of the spider’s affection for the clueless strawberry.

Ah, motherhood. This is what we do to ourselves. Did I for one moment think the strawberry was my husband? Or better yet, that it was just a strawberry?

All these years later, with a daughter in college and Finn about to be a senior in high school, when I look above my desk at this drawing, I no longer feel guilt. What I feel is longing: now I am the spider and my children are the giant strawberry. I am the one standing on the cliff, minus two legs (probably because I gave them to the kids for a project at school one rushed morning or maybe because one broke off during that time I was training for a 10K). I am the one jumping up and down like a maniac yelling I love you at my darling strawberries who are soaring, gorgeously airborne and headed out to the scary, wonderful world far away.

Breathe, I tell myself a million times a day as I watch it all happen from on top of the cliff, levitating with longing and pride and wonder. I love you, I tell them in every way I can: texting, calling, packing a lunch with extra care for the high schooler, Door Dashing the college kid, knowing it’s not anywhere big enough to express the magnitude of my affection.

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Imagine this sweet thing, but with fur.

However.

When we take Archie on our daily walk around the block - mind you the walk Archie is dying to take, a walk he is falling all over himself with excitement to begin - the moment he exits the front door, he promptly greets every man, beast or blade of grass like they are his mortal enemy.

RUFF RUFF RUFF he screams at every passerby, straining at his leash, choking himself.

But it sounds less like RUFF RUFF RUFF and more like F-you! F-you! F-you!

All while looking something like this:

It’s just not pleasant.

Most folks just laugh at him. He’s looks so silly and harmless. Even the neighborhood dogs have taken to rolling their eyes at him, but I feel badly Archie, watching him strain to reach out to others in the only way he knows how: annoyingly and with zero social grace. He was three when we adopted him so I can’t begin to understand why he reacts to the world as he does.

Fortunately, this only happens when he’s on leash and we have people over to the house lots, so Archie gets plenty of socializing with them; when he’s off leash, he’s friendly and lovely with everyone. And of course, we love on him constantly (please don’t email me about training, we’ve tried everything) but it makes me wonder, how many “Archies” are out there?

Not just dog Archies, but people Archies. People who are out there trying to connect with the world and find themselves all alone in the corner of the cocktail party? Or clinging to the walls of the work social? Or sticking to the spinach dip at a mom’s meet up? These are the people equivalent of Archie straining at the leash: “I really, really want to connect with you but I’m all SUPER nervous about it and this is what it looks like, please see past it, will you?”

Sometimes our social anxieties (or leash anxiety, in Archie’s case) get in the way of us living our best lives. So, thinking for today: how can we better meet people where they are? How can we approach the Jack Jack at the office who seems gruff and grumpy, but maybe is craving - and needing - connection as deeply as anyone?

I myself can be on the shy side and have been the lucky recipient of a kind offer to join the “fun” table at the get together or come along for a coffee or lunch at work and it’s made all the difference. So I’m asking you: how do you set aside your own fears or simply make time in your busy day to take a moment to offer an invitation over, a seat (or a treat) to an Archie in your life?

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Here’s one.

I love old letters and postcards so while we were exploring Siena, a gorgeous village in Tuscany, I was stopped in my tracks by a rack of old postcards sitting outside a small shop. Clutching a few cards, I ventured into the shop to see what other treasures might await and found a slim bearded man having what sounded like a robust conversation in Italian with the shop owner.

I would learn that Andreas, the customer, was half Swiss and half Sienese and was home visiting. When I entered, he saw what I had in my hand which I didn’t realize was a postcard advertising the Palio di Sienna, a 500-year old horse race that is as embedded in the culture of Sienna as the cobblestone streets.

He and Fabrizio, the shop owner, explained to me - in a jubilant combination of English and Italian - that Siena is divided into contrada, or neighborhoods, and that for the past five centuries, these neighborhoods have competed in a horse race twice each summer.

You might be thinking, oh how quaint. How lovely.

No, it’s neither. What it is, Andreas explained, is essential. The year, the Sienese life revolves around it. Il Palio is the fabric of the village. It determines fates. For example they say, Andreas is considered a lucky person because his contrade, which like all seventeen contrada is represented by specific colors and a mascot (his being the crested porcupine), last won the race in 2008. Whereas, Fabrizio’s contrade hasn’t won since the late 1990’s.

Ah, the misfortune, says Fabrizio in Italian, his head down.

We all bow our heads, commiserating with Fabrizio, our acquaintance of five minutes, but now, our comrade, our friend. Yes the misfortune, we all feel in our hearts for Fabrizio.

Andreas confides to us that he is still devastated that the year his contrade Istrci won, he did not come home to Siena for the race. He missed it: the 90-second, three lap horse race around the piazza that this village has built their lives, their community upon. Istrici had won and he had missed it.

Again, we bowed our heads. What a missed moment, we say with our bodies and our hearts.

Andreas is suddenly cheered by an idea, running toward a box of postcards in the corner of the shop. He says something to Fabrizio in Italian and digs deeper into the box, pulling out this postcard victoriously and handing it to me.

This is my contrade, he says to me proudly. Istrici. Now you will always be a fan of the Istrici. Now, you will remember us. I will buy this for her, he says to Fabrizio, tossing a Euro onto the counter, a big smile on his face.

Yes, Andreas, I will always be a fan. I will remember you and the Istrici. And I will remember that everywhere we step, underneath us lie millions of threads connecting us to one another, simply waiting to be discovered, waiting to be picked up. I will remember that community is everywhere, should we choose to look

This is why we travel. That, and the pasta.

For more on the Il Palio, check out:

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G,

You know, it won't take much encouragement from you for me to keep this up. It's this or journal writing which is about as self-indulgent as it gets. When I think of things I'd like to share with you it becomes clear that this might be all I have to give you. I don't have an estate I can pass along and, with any luck, I won't be leaving many unpaid bills behind.

Don't worry, I'm not sitting around contemplating my mortality but at some point you need to address your successes and failures. The area that has always concerned me has been the nature of curiosity and how it factors in literature of any sort. When I encourage you to investigate, what I'm really saying is that needs to be a permanent mind set. What I see around me, particularly in the media, is an absence of inquiry. Not in a traditional sense, anybody can ask the who, what, why, where, when, how. I mean a deeper, more quizzical, filled with wonder approach to humanity. Good crime reporters seem to have it but forms that permit this type of perusal are scarce. Genuine observations of the spirit, a consistent wonder at the human condition reflex-response fill the pages by only a choice number of writers. Plot and format drive most forms leaving little room for bemusement. But when a writer catches even a tiny glimpse or what drives people to behave in the way they do, BINGO! It eclipses technique, command of language, vast knowledge of a subject, wit, sarcasm, humor and any number of tricks of the trade. You can see it in cartoons and even more frequently in advertising where economy of space rules the day. I think the only notes that resonate in writing are the ones we manage to capture from our observations which we then filter through our own personal lens of understanding. When you read something you've written for someone else, you watch their eyes and evaluate their body language to determine their real response more than anything they can say. When you write something funny, there is no sound more terrible than the lack of a laugh and nothing more enjoyable than getting one. Why do some people remember certain lines form movies long after they have seen them? Often that's the only thing they remember, not who was in it, not what the title was or even a coherent understanding of what the story was about. A truly great line in any form reaps a reward unsurpassed by any check. Who comes to mind? Woody Allen, Will Rogers, Winston Churchill, Bruce Springsteen, Sam Shepard, Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, Charles Collingwood, Ring Lardner - it's a tiny group. Others are out there, toiling away, just like you, looking for the edge, sorting out their impressions, throwing away reams of first attempts, knowing full well how uninformed they are and how ill-equipped any of us are in trying to crystallize our sensibilities…

I was 26 years old. I had no idea really, what you were asking me to do: to be curious about the world on a cellular level, to approach everything with a sense of wonder. Yet, that’s exactly the person you’ve made me into. I am first and foremost someone is captivated by the world and the people in it.

You did that for me.

And it has made my life so much richer, and occasionally, exhausting. I’m always looking deeper, finding meaning all around me. Dad, you made me realize that the ordinary is the extraordinary.

I somehow have passed this on to your grandchildren, as well. This tendency to make “genuine observations of the spirit,” to maintain “a consistent wonder at the human condition reflex-response”; these qualities are woven through them both. It’s in the questions they ask of strangers, in their sheer willingness to engage with the world. Inquiry, for them at 17 and 20, is already a permanent mind set.

So for your 80th birthday, this is what I’m giving you: to know that you were a huge success. That you not only accomplished your goal of becoming a writer, of touching thousands of readers with your words, but that you’ve also instilled in two young people you’ve never met a way of looking at the world that will never be lost on either of them, or on me.

I love you.

G

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My daughter Reese will be 21 in December and she is nothing like the young woman in this photo - me on my 21st birthday, over 30 years ago.

I just want five minutes with this wafer-thin woman with giant hair, who was convinced she was a vulnerable, peeled grape of a girl. She would navigate her way through the next decade certain she wasn’t enough - or worse, that she was too much.

I can see now what she did not: the wiry steel running through her, from scalp to toes. She is resilient, relentless even.

But she’s a few years from recognizing her softness as strength, or her empathy as an asset.

I want to take her in my arms and whisper into her ear what my daughter already knows well (thank goodness): You are enough. You are exactly, uniquely enough.

And also: there’s going to a be a thing called the internet. So if someone offers you stock in something called a Google, please - for all that is holy - buy it.

That’s what he likely believed until he took his life in 2001.

But last week, all these years later, his words reached over 700,000 people through this essay on Huffington Post. Over a hundred messages flooded my inbox, sharing stories of how my father’s words had spoken to people so very personally; for some, it felt like he was their father, guiding them and inspiring them in exactly the way they needed most.

A high school teacher wrote to ask if I would be publishing all 48 of my father’s letters, so she could teach them in her English class. Another person asked if he could quote my father in a work presentation he was giving on leadership. He wanted to use this, from my father’s letter to me:

“In your search for something positive, look in the corners. The true leaders are often anonymous.”

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I said yes, of course you can use it. So now, that quote from my father about true leaders being anonymous, is in a PowerPoint somewhere, being shown to a conference room full of folks, with the attribution below it: Dick Broder.

So Dad, you were wrong about this one thing. We both made it. We’re both writers.

To all those who happen to come across this post: please know that your gifts are treasures. Even if they have yet to be seen as such, even if it’s just you working on them in the dim light before work, or in the chill of your garage or boiler room. Please know this: they are treasures and you are a treasure.

Also: We love you. We need you here. You can make it, too.

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While I’d been waiting, I’d made the decision I deserved lox, as well as a few extra bagels for the week. Holding said lox and a package of cream cheese to boot, I replied, “No, don’t be silly, I’m getting lox and everything.” 

I would come to find out her name was Jackie. She was wearing a leopard print top and the most remarkably stylish black-rimmed glasses. She peered through them at me with great seriousness and said, “That’s fine, I’m getting it all.”

I stood there shocked. 

When Jackie finished paying, I thanked her, got her name and this photo. I asked if she’d done this kindness for me all because I’d held the door open for her?

She said no, she’d done it because she could. And because the world needs more good things in it. 

Thanks Jackie. You certainly put so much good into my world today. I am filled to the brim with it and I haven’t even had the bagel yet.

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In a hyper-connected world, we are lonelier than ever. Let’s change that.

Surveys show over 60% of people around the world are feeling lonely a good portion of the time. The culprits? Everything from the screen you’re reading this on right now, to the pandemic, to Netflix. But whatever it is, this is where we are.

Here’s how I think I can help:

1. I write about connection.

For the last few years I’ve been writing for national publications about going to the movies, dining out, letting go of my teenagers and making friends when I travel. But really, what I’ve been writing about all along - what I’m fascinated and driven by - is connection. And I want to share stories about all of that right here, with you.

2. It is in the moments that we can find one another.

By sharing the moments of connection here - and having you share back - we will build community. We will tether together, lift each other up and pull one another through.

3. This is for everyone.

I will post here every week or two and it will be free. I hope you will subscribe and comment nicely. I hope you will invite your friends to subscribe and comment nicely. More than anything thought, I hope this will be an inclusive, kind space - one that will reduce loneliness and increase joy and connection.

4. This is Archie. He always brings joy.

He seems like a perfect way to start our adventure.

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