What If It’s More?

Saturday, November 5, 2004

I was ten the night everything quietly changed.

Laughter filled the Fagen family room. Kids in Halloween costumes darted between couches while the Shrek 2 soundtrack echoed through the speakers. Goblins, ghosts, superheroes, all too caught up in the chaos to notice the birthday boy had slipped away to the garage. Alone.

His tears finally broke through the seal he’d kept all evening.

The “talk of the town” party was only halfway through, yet I already felt the night ending. The emotion came fast — a rush that tipped from joy into something heavier.

Maybe part of the ache came from realizing how rare that kind of togetherness was — all my little worlds colliding for one night, never quite the same again.

I didn’t know it then, but that moment was less about sadness and more about recognition: the first glimpse of how fast everything moves. One second you’re in it, the next it’s already becoming memory. Maybe that’s what I was really crying for — that nothing, not even joy, stands still for long.

I didn’t have the words for it back then. Just the ache. That moment in the dark garage became the lens I’ve carried ever since, shaping how I see people, how I write, how I listen. Long before I had a title, a platform, or a plan, I had a single question: What if it’s more?

🎥 This scene has always stuck with me. It captures the same feeling I had in that garage — how fast time starts moving the moment we realize it won’t wait for us.

I was also learning, though I couldn’t name it yet, that my mind didn’t always move in straight lines. Even at ten, I could feel time slipping, grieving what had passed instead of enjoying what was left. And what hurt most was not understanding why. Everyone else was laughing, alive in the moment, and I couldn’t match it.

That night was the first time I realized my feelings didn’t always fit the room — that joy and sadness could share the same breath, each trying to tell me something I wasn’t ready to hear.

Looking back, I now see it as the first step in what would quietly become my personal reinvention story — not all at once, but piece by piece, through every story I helped tell.

After years of poetry, meditation, and therapy, I see it differently. That night wasn’t a meltdown. It was the beginning of awareness. The first flicker of understanding that emotions can collide and still coexist. That joy and loss can exist side by side; neither needing to disappear for the other to matter.

Even then, I somehow knew this ache was inevitable. I’ve always felt things deeply—maybe too deeply. But this was different. It wasn’t empathy for someone else. It was empathy turned inward. Grief for a version of me already fading.

Beneath that dim garage light, swaying like it was breathing with me, I wiped my eyes and whispered a question that’s followed me ever since: What if it's more?

We’re all fighting quiet battles of our own — even the birthday boy who couldn’t explain why his chest felt heavy while everyone else was laughing.

Somewhere in that moment, between the question and the quiet that followed, I realized that maybe purpose isn’t something you find all at once. Maybe it shows up in the people you show up for. The stories you help tell. The small ways you turn pain into perspective.

That question became my compass.

It reminded me that stories aren’t just told; they’re lived, shared, and carried forward by the people brave enough to tell them.

It turned that flicker of awareness into the heartbeat behind everything I’ve built since: stories that move through classrooms, communities, boardrooms, and ballrooms: for nonprofits, creative agencies, and brands that lead with heart.

But more than the campaigns or clients, it’s the people who’ve shaped it all that stay with me, the conversations, the courage, the reminders of why story matters in the first place.

I’ve written alongside civil-rights attorney Fred Gray, who stood beside Dr. King and Rosa Parks. With cognitive scientist Dr. Maureen Dunne, whose work in neurodiversity redefines inclusion. With Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jonathan Eig. And humanitarian Jessica Buchanan, who turned survival into service.

I’ve helped amplify voices like Dr. Robert M. Gates and Admiral Michael Mullen, collaborating with partners who prove that empathy and excellence can coexist.

I’ve been lucky to tell stories that live in classrooms, boardrooms, and communities — both on national stages and in my own backyard. What stays with me isn’t the scale. It’s the people. The way connection keeps finding its way in.

In every one of those stories, I found a little more of my own. Not because they were mine — but because they reminded me that real connection never belongs to just one person.

Every project, every post, every late-night edit has been its own quiet reminder: Connection starts small, grows through trust, and moves forward with care.

On October 6, 2025, I officially registered Mindful Media, LLC in Illinois — a creative studio rooted in storytelling that not only converts but connects.

It isn’t a rebrand or a pivot; it’s the natural next chapter in a personal reinvention story that began long before I had the language for it.

At Mindful Media, everything starts with heart. 💛

It’s about helping good people share what they do in a way that feels sincere — because one-on-one human connection always begins there.

Most of my career has been spent where storytelling meets impact — leading campaigns that lift education, service, inclusion, community, and the arts. Through Mindful Media, that same purpose continues: helping organizations, creatives, and causes tell stories that don’t just perform but resonate.

Because connection — real, human, mindful connection — is what turns any story from a concept into a movement.

Because real connection isn’t about conversion at all. It’s about care — the quiet kind that reminds us we’re already whole, even as we keep growing. 💛

Through every campaign, conversation, and creative risk, I’ve learned: The stories that stay with us come from honesty, empathy, and lived experience — the kind that reminds us why connection still matters.

We all have those nights when it hits us that things are changing. That time is moving faster than we want it to. That we’re not the same person we were even a year ago.

But maybe that’s not something to fear. Maybe it’s just life doing what it’s meant to do, moving, shaping, stretching us into someone new.

And if that old garage light could talk, it would probably laugh at how far we’ve come.

From the kid who cried because the night was ending…to the adult learning that endings aren’t endings at all.

They’re openings.

To growth.

To gratitude.

To the space between thoughts, where peace finally has room to breathe.

Maybe that’s what more was always meant to be — not a bigger life, but a deeper one. One lived with heart, with presence, with purpose. One moment at a time. 💛