Impact Summer Summit

I feel grateful and honored with every invitation to present.

So you can imagine my delight when Rachel over at Stress Free School Counseling asked if I'd like to be a part of this summer's Summit. When she encouraged me to pitch a topic, I knew immediately what I'd propose.

I never pass up the opportunity to talk about #empathy!

And moving from me to WE? Simple, but not always easy,

because it requires connection, vulnerability, and trust.

But at the end of the day, together we're stronger, right?

It really recharged my battery to build and record this session for the June 30 and July 1 Summit, which is free for Impact members.

I especially enjoy the emotional literacy piece of empathy,

that invitation to step into someone else's story, to feel with them.

It requires understanding our own feelings

in order to understand the emotions of others.

And I thrive on creating and curating resources to help others

elevate empathy, mobilize compassion, and make kindness a way of life.

If you're a school counselor or #SEL educator, click {here} for more info.

Now for today's reflection:

When I read in the news this morning that someone's 36-year-old daughter had died, my first thought was, "I wonder how she died." After that fleeting curiosity, it occurred to me that an even more important question is, "I wonder how she lived." That's what makes an obituary so important. Sadly, I've written six in the last five years. Sigh.

It seems to beg the question:

If you were to write your obituary,

what would it say about how you lived?

When I was in high school, the teacher of a semester class called Death and Dying had us do just that, write our own eulogy. I'm not sure I fully understood that assignment as a teenager, but it seems more real to me now as I inch toward receiving my Medicare card in the mail. I wish I still had that particular writing sample, though I don't think it would differ much from how mine would read today.

Who mattered to me? And what mattered to me? How did I connect and serve? How did I put love into action and what did I leave behind for and in my family, my friends, my favorite charities?

I'll sign off with one of my very favorite quotes

by Michael Josephson, founder of CharacterCounts!