At least one of us is going to make it.

“I want you to know that I am proud of you and pleased that you are becoming what I’ve only dreamed of becoming, a writer,” my dad wrote me once. “At least one of us is going to make 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.”

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.