Five years later, we still don’t understand the physical and emotional impact of the pandemic. I have barely scratched the surface of the educational impact. With every conversation on the topic, I learn something new. For example, when I first heard the term “Long COVID,” I assumed it meant feeling run down with lingering symptoms. That doesn’t even begin to explain it. 

Stacey Farlie has explained to me for much of the first year, she could barely get out of bed. She was a prisoner in her house except for quick trips to the grocery store. Today she is better. What does better mean? She deals with elevated temperature and flu-like symptoms from the routine task of taking medicine or supplements and massive post-exertional malaise (PEM). 

She went from spinning 4-5 times a week to barely being able to walk. Everything exacerbates this… food, heat, exertion, mental anguish…it’s a constant yet unexpected roller coaster in a life of unforeseen limitations that are strange and complicated. Each relapse brings with it unremitting depression, crying, fever, sore throats and breathing issues, congestion, hoarseness, internal vibrations. Not to mention an inability to stand up for too long. 

Stacey’s three-year journey through this invisible illness reveals not only the profound physical and emotional toll of long COVID, but also the gaps in our medical system, the loneliness of suffering from a condition that others can’t see or understand, and the urgent need for all of us to expand our compassion for those fighting battles we cannot imagine. This is her story, told with her permission, because sometimes the most powerful medicine is simply being heard.

Stacey: It’s just a very hard thing to describe to people. They just think you’re tired.

It’s not like I need a nap. It’s like somebody has unplugged all my cells.

Check yourself. What is your initial impression when you hear the term, long COVID? What presumptions bubble to the surface? I’ll admit I had no idea it had dropped my college roommate into a world where her own body would become unrecognizable to her, where the simple act of taking medicine could leave her bedridden, all within a medical system – traditional and alternative – that struggles to understand what is happening.

What I’ve learned, through Stacey’s recounting of her countless doctor visits, mysterious fevers, and hours of research deep-dives is that this isn’t a disease, it’s a post-viral syndrome, and it is devastating. In fact, research completed in the United Kingdom revealed something Stacey already felt in her bones: people with long COVID may actually suffer more than those battling certain types of cancer. 

Stacey: They did a study of people, and they said that people with long COVID actually suffer more than people with cancer, because when you have cancer, now this is probably not if you’re dying of cancer, but just having cancer – there’s a protocol, there’s support. You have days where you can feel really good. You know it’s probably going to be over, hopefully, for the most part. It’s a really bad period that you’re going through. They found that the people with long COVID were actually suffering more because there isn’t any of that.

Not because cancer isn’t devastating—it absolutely is—but because cancer patients have something Stacey doesn’t: a clear diagnosis, established treatment protocols, a healthcare system and public opinion that takes their suffering seriously. This study published in BMJ Open, involving over 3,750 long COVID patients across England, found that the impact on one’s daily life was worse than stroke survivors and comparable to people living with Parkinson’s disease. 

“Long COVID is an invisible condition,” explains Professor William Henley from the University of Exeter, one of the study’s authors. “Many people are left trying to manage significant changes to how they can function. Shockingly, our research has revealed that long COVID can leave people with worse fatigue and quality of life than some cancers, yet the support and understanding is not at the same level.”

The invisibility he mentions Stacey has described as isolation. There are no established clear treatment pathways, support groups, nor a shared understanding of long COVID. You often look fine from the outside, but you’re trapped in a body that is betraying you while the world expects you to function normally.

Stacey: Okay, so here we start crying.

Liz: I’m sorry.

Stacey: It’s just really hard. I mean, I think the hardest thing about long COVID is how lonely it is.

In the beginning, like with any acute sickness, your friends rally around you. But once you’ve been sick for a while, especially with COVID being so politically loaded and people just wanting nothing to do with it. If I had said I had almost anything else, I think I would have gotten a completely different reaction. But It’s very isolating.

Stacey has had to become her own case manager, researcher, and advocate out of necessity. She has had to stand up for herself in the face of skepticism and dismissal from friends and physicians alike. 

Stacey: And I have what you would call a busy brain. I’m always thinking. And so imagine when I first had this, I wanted to figure out what to do. I’m a problem solver, and I wanted to… I felt like the answer had to be out there somewhere if I just looked hard enough. I don’t know. I do still think there is an answer, and I do think there are ways to get better. And sometimes it’s just time. It’s been three years now. I am much better than I was that first year that I’m describing to you.

Liz: Better isn’t the answer. I don’t want you to feel better. I want you to feel good.

So I was wrong. Long COVID isn’t just about being tired. Stacey can’t push through or think more positively to navigate her way through this disease. This is a complex, multi-system illness that has fundamentally altered Stacey’s body and her life. It’s about waking up every day not knowing what might cause her next downfall – other than the very medicine prescribed to help.

Liz: You’ve got to be tired of silver bullets that don’t work out.

Stacey: Well, the bigger thing is I can’t take anything.

And by that she means medicine or supplements without getting a fever and mini relapse. 

So until someone figures out how to turn that mechanism off… It took me a year to connect the dots and see it wasn’t until I got off all the medicine that my fever started to go down a little and then eventually go away. Now, when I take anything, I immediately get a fever, and I feel like I have the flu. Anything anything, like aspirin, which should quell the fever, but it doesn’t.

Covid triggered a systematic collapse that she hasn’t recovered from over three years later. Again, check yourself. Are you thinking about an underlying condition and coming to the conclusion – ok then that couldn’t happen to me. At one point a long covid specialist wanted her to take a strong immunosuppressant.

Stacey: I was so sick. I kept protesting taking the medicine because I’m like, I don’t react well. This is before I knew why, but I was like, I don’t react well to this. This is a really strong medicine. It’s what they give you when you’ve had a transplant to keep you from rejecting the organ, it has a black box warning, can cause cancer.

I’m like, Are you kidding me? I don’t do well with little things. And he was like, Well, what are you going to do? Just sit here crying? You need to take steps. You need to do something. He’s said, I know better than you that this is what you need to do.

And because I was in such a vulnerable place, I was like, Okay, I’ll try. So I went home. Really, I was trying it just to prove him wrong. And I immediately took it… within an hour I had a 104 fever. I was on it for a few days, and then I just took myself off of it. That launched me into three months in bed, basically. And it wasn’t really until I got off of all the medication that I slowly, slowly, slowly started to be able to get out of bed.

I didn’t know what to do because at that point, I was like, I’m done with Western medicine. All they have

Liz: …is what’s on the flowchart. 

Stacey: in their bag of tricks is medication.

COVID is an unknown that landed us all in a massive science experiment. While researchers work through hypotheses and debate treatment protocols, real people continue to suffer—and if it’s not happening in our own homes, we remain blissfully unaware of their reality. Stacey has given me permission to tell this story for awareness, knowing that this account might not change her outcome, but it could possibly shift one person’s understanding or ease the isolation for someone else walking this difficult path.

A new study has developed a blood test to diagnose Long Covid. 

Stacey: And I don’t think they know enough about it yet. So, that study, I thought, was very interesting because  it’s the first step. Then they’re going to develop a blood test eventually. I mean, again, kind of silly, because I know I have long COVID, but at the same time, they’re now going to start working on antivirals…

Liz: And the medical world needs the blood test that says, yes, here’s the diagnosis to do the next thing, so at least you’re another step out of the flowchart.

Stacey: Western medicine, the way they operate is you have to do a study, then you have to get it passed through all this bureaucracy, and then eventually you can give that medication for that illness.

Medicine that Stacey cannot take, but she tried time and again as instructed by doctors and naturopaths alike.

Stacey: I did because I’m a good girl, and I listen …most of the time. But I’m also a rebel. If I don’t see it going well, I’m out. 

Liz: This is trauma for you. This is not just medical because in trauma, something hasn’t happened for two years, but when it happens, it feels like it happened yesterday. That has to be what these reactions feel like to you.

Stacey: It is. I take it back with the loneliness is not the worst part. The worst part is the setbacks. I can be going along and I’m pretty good and I’m functional for a month, and then I try something…. And to be back in that place is so difficult.

Liz: Yeah. And you got to beat yourself up. I can’t even imagine.

Stacey: Yeah. And I just feel like it’s never going to get better. 

I think that one of my biggest epiphanies of this whole experience has been about masking. And I think we all do this to some extent. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and I always have that mask on .. everything’s great, and I’m doing this, and I’m achieving that. And it’s carried on into the sickness, where I’m doing what other people want. I’m pretending like I’m fine because I can’t deal with their reaction. It’s just not worth it.

Liz: And that comes from the good girl syndrome.

Stacey: Yes, absolutely.

There’s another layer to this struggle. As someone raised to be a “good girl”—to be accommodating, to not make a fuss, to put others’ needs before her own—advocating for herself in a medical system that already struggles to take women’s pain seriously has been its own form of torture if you ask me.  Given that women make up 71% of long COVID clinic patients, I am certain there are many females trying to break free from the “good girl” trap—learning that your suffering matters, you are not a burden, you deserve care, saying “no” isn’t selfish. You don’t have to put on a mask of a brave face for the world. Ironic to be talking about masking – putting on a brave face – in relation to the pandemic that required masking and gave it a completely different meaning.

Liz: The other thing this plays into is that other thing we have being perfectionist, overachiever, overthinker, good girls, is ‘I’m not doing enough.’ And I’m sure you feel that way. And as your friend, I feel that way. I’m not doing enough. 

Stacey: That’s very hard because Craig (Stacey’s husband) constantly wants me to do nothing because it does appear like I’m better doing nothing, but then I’m also not healing. It’s just a band-aid. I think. But that’s how I feel. He can’t see that or feel that. But I have this constant need to try things. 

I get that. Our social media feeds are saturated with products that promise to improve our lives – be healthier, lose weight, have more strength, stamina, serenity… These endless advertisements prey on our insecurities and offer a stream of “solutions” that suggest our current selves are somehow inadequate. Of course, we all fall prey to one thing or another.

Liz: Gosh, my mom, I asked her one day, “Mom, you’ve been in medicine. How long? What is the thing? I want one thing I should do every day that is going to make me better because I can’t keep following the long list that just keeps getting longer of what I’m supposed to do.” She laughed at me and she said, eat an apple and go for a walk. 

We were in the pool at her apartment complex, and there was another man who happened to be standing nearby. And I saw him months later at a yoga class, and he looked at me and said, ‘Still eating my apple every day.” And I looked at him and I said, ‘Are you kidding?’ And he says, ‘I heard your mom. I walk every day and I eat an apple every day.’ I said, ‘How are you feeling? He goes, I don’t know how I’m feeling, but I feel like if your mom told me to do it,  I’m doing it.’ 

I don’t know. I do think we can run ourselves ragged as a full population. So I can’t even imagine how it would be for Stacey.

There is no magic bullet – and of course I wasn’t suggesting an apple could cure Stacey’s ills. I told her as much, but I couldn’t help but chuckle when she texted me later in the day, “…I just had an apple.”  It’s not about the apple. It’s my mom. As a physician, she listened… to a fault. You knew she cared. She also had an uncanny sense to hear symptoms and make recommendations that worked. I think of her every time I cut an apple. Before I take my first bite, I feel better. I doubt an apple will have the same curative effect for Stacey, but I do wish mom were here to talk to Stacey …to offer her rare brand of support.

Liz: What would positive support have looked like? Can you identify that?

Stacey: Yeah, it’s really not hard. It’s just checking in. It’s checking in and being curious, wanting to find out, well, what are you feeling? Just being heard is support. And just saying, oh, my God, that must be really hard. 

Liz: When somebody says, How are you? They want you to say better. They’re really not looking for any other answer. And I don’t know how to change the question because now in my life, when I say, How are you? I want the truth. ‘I’m as shitty today as I was yesterday.’ That’s a good answer. But I don’t know how to change the question because ‘how are you’ in this society is as throw away as the wave I just offered to a woman on this walk. It was just a courtesy.

Stacey: You asked what I need from other people. I am somebody who likes to work through my problems by talking. That’s how I think. The more I talk through it, I have epiphanies when I talk.

Liz: That’s what this whole walking project is. 

Stacey: Exactly. So what I’ve learned by this is that other people are the opposite. They don’t want to talk about problems, that’s not what they want to do. And so that’s really been the hardest thing about long COVID is being shut down. I do want to talk about it. I do want people to ask, ‘Well, explain to me, What are you doing? What do you think? And why? Do you have any ideas why you can’t take any medicine?’ It helps me to work through it. Sometimes I put pieces together that I would have never had before if I hadn’t talked through it. 

Not everyone wants to talk through it. Not everyone processes that way. We also have to leave room for our differences.

Stacey: I’ve realized friends serve different purposes at different times.

Liz: Nobody can be everything for us.

Stacey: Absolutely.

Liz: And it’s okay.

Stacey: And you can come back to them at a different point when you need them for other things, or you can be there for them.

Show up. Text. Call. Ask. So many of these walks have offered these same reminders. Why do we forget life is precious? We do not know what lies around the corner.

Stacey: We take each other for granted.

Liz : Oh, my God. I’m taking the fact that I’m walking for granted. I can’t tell you how many times in this call I’ve thought, I got to stop bitching. I feel good for the most part. I can walk.

Stacey sat for our “walk” – a more than acceptable exemption in this case. I wish her illness wasn’t so unknown. I wish she could count on more strength. For how much I hate medical flowcharts, I wish there were protocols to follow that promised some relief.

Liz: We don’t know what to do with long COVID, and we want it to just fit neatly into a box, and it doesn’t. And that’s what it is for the friend who doesn’t have it. But for you, you literally have no choice but to respond to what your body is forcing you to do.

Stacey: Yes. And it’s just a very hard thing to describe to people. They just think you’re tired.

We need a new word. The actual medical term for long COVID/ME-CFS fatigue is post-exertional malaise. That’s probably not it, but “tired” is too commonplace. When someone says “I’m tired,” people immediately think of their own experience of tiredness and respond with advice like “get more sleep” or “have some coffee.” But long COVID fatigue is more like having the flu while hungover after running a marathon – it’s a completely different physiological state… but through the haze of that, Stacey can still find positives.

Stacey: It’s the essay writer in me…you have to have a conflict, and then come out the other side…

And she has the fortitude to see the positive growth she has experienced.

Stacey: I’ve become a lot more emotionally self-reliant, which is hard for me, because I talked to you about how I like to talk through my issues, but I’ve had to reach deep and keep reminding myself, ‘It’ll be a little bit better tomorrow, I’m just having a bad moment,’ …kind of talk myself through it.

She is also learning patience and making herself a priority when much of our lives as wives, mothers has been about everyone else.

Stacey: that’s another thing I’ve had a lot of trouble with, is… 

Liz: what’s that? 

Stacey: Putting limits.

Liz: I don’t know, I think… I think you could teach me a ton about how to use the word no.  I mean, my mom used to say all the time, it’s a full sentence.

Stacey: Yes, and I still have my problems with that.

Liz: I have never once felt let down because you took care of yourself, even when you weren’t coming to reunions.  I was disappointed I wouldn’t get to see you, but there was a part of me that was so effin’ proud of you for putting yourself first, because that’s just not typical, especially for women our age.

What if we rested when we need to. What if we prioritized our health and our future selves over a scheduled trip, event or meeting? What if we knew ourselves well enough to say no much more often than we do. And while we are talking about what if… what if a researcher heard this story and asked, how can I help? What can I learn? Stacey Farlie is not a statistic. She is one of my dearest friends and simply listening to her is not enough, but there is little else I can do… well… I could write her story down and share it.

Stacey allowed me to share her story not because it will cure her illness or change the medical system, but because she knows that many others suffer invisibly and they do not need to feel isolated. The act of truly seeing someone, of asking with genuine curiosity about their experience are profound gifts we could all offer much more freely. 

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There are times that I meet someone and I am drawn to their energy. Immediately, I sense that I am supposed to work with this person. Very few of them slip away and if they do, our paths cross again. As if it is meant to be. Keely Baronak has that energy. Luckily, our paths simply continue to cross. 

Liz: So let’s just start with… somehow the universe is like, let’s shake up this snow globe and make sure Keely and Liz land at the same place at the same time. And that really feels how fortuitous it is that you and I meet at Bethany. 

We share an unmistakable zeal for teaching and learning. Little did I know in 2006 how appreciative I should be for that chance meeting. Keely is the newly appointed Dean of the College of Education and Social Work at Carlow University. I could list her accolades and detail the impactful grants she has been awarded, but doing so does not match with the humble, brilliant woman with whom I have walked this professional life for almost twenty years. When Keely speaks about the programs at Carlow, her words are marked by her animated gestures. Her eyes brighten when she mentions student success stories. I know few other people whose infectious enthusiasm simply radiates when we talk about pedagogical possibilities. And with Keely in the conversation… the possibilities are only capped by the limits of your imagination.

Keely: I think so much of what I do on a daily basis is people-connecting. I try to consider, who needs to be in which meeting, who needs to have what information?.  It’s a lot of project management and then finding money. That’s what I do. So If I could distill it, that’s what I do all day.

Liz: And you’re very good at both.

Keely: That’s what I learned early on in stewardship. People give to people. They have to trust you. They have to believe in the vision that you’ve laid out. It’s the project, sure, but it’s more importantly, the person who’s going to shepherd it. And the team with whom you work has to trust you. 

Liz: There were years that one foundation would say to me, ‘What money do you need?’ And there were some years when I didn’t need any money. I had no project in the works, which was a huge kick in the butt. You always need to have something in the works, right? Some pipe dream… 

Keely: Three ideas ready at all times. This is what I have in the slide deck. You never know what will resonate.

Liz: That’s right. Whether it’s a donor or a partner organization or whatever the case may be. But now that I forced myself through that startup machine, I see everything with the possibility of how we might do it better, differently. That’s what you’re doing. One of my favorite things you’re doing is the apprenticeship work. Was that the biggest grant you got at Carlow?

Keely: 12 million.

Liz: That’s a staggering number to me. How did that come about? 

Keely: My first year at Carlow, Rae Ann Hirsh, this dynamic Carlow professor, pitched an idea for an OCDEL grant. OCDEL is the Office of Child Development and Early Learning – the other arm of PDE which oversees early childhood education in Pennsylvania. We wanted to really understand the workforce needs of childcare centers and the barriers to high quality STAR ratings. So we started with two centers in this grant, and it bloomed into an idea for an apprenticeship program… a pathway for degree completion for individuals who work full-time in childcare centers. 

Liz: So the students in the program were already full-time employees at the child care centers?

Keely: Yes, and remain so to this day.

Liz: So it wasn’t the other way around, that you took students and then got them employment. You were making a pathway for people who were working.

Keely: Right. Ours was unlike a more traditional vocational or skills-based apprenticeship program. 

By the way it became the first registered four-year apprenticeship program in early childhood in the state of Pennsylvania. It didn’t happen overnight. One grant led to another and their reach grew.

Keely: Part of this was we knew we were in this for the long haul. So it started with a $1 million concept testing grant. We started with 22 apprentices, all from Allegheny County, and it worked, it grew. 

So it took years.

Keely: But that was important, too, because the work was thoughtfully designed, right? Each step along the way showed the fidelity of the work and the impact it was having. Now we operate across eight counties in Western Pennsylvania. We work with 140 apprenticeship students and 87 childcare centers in any given year. We have changed course when we needed to, co-created with students for a richer experience.  Our apprenticeship director. Sue Polojac, is dedicated to this work and the success of our students. Seventy five students have graduated.  Another 35 will graduate this year.  This creates an incredible ripple across communities and families.  

What began as Rae Ann Hirsh’s visionary recognition of a critical workforce challenge in Pennsylvania’s early childhood education system has blossomed into a transformative force. Rae Ann and Keely refused to accept the status quo. That is what you do when you are with Keely, you look at the status quo and ask, ‘Is it serving the needs of children as best it can?’ Follow that with, ‘What can we do about it?’ The next thing you know we are reimaging systems. Keely has the persistence to nurture those reimagined possibilities into thriving realities.

It doesn’t come as any surprise that life wasn’t a straight line from Bethany to Carlow. Instead it comes with the natural peaks and valleys – great successes like a childcare center for professors’ families or an International Dyslexia Association accreditation followed by the confounding realities that moved each of us on to the next challenge. And when I say the word challenge, what Keely will hear is the word opportunity.

Liz: I used to think there had to have been a way that somebody could help me not get so lost. And used to, as in when I started this sabbatical or whatever the hell I should call it. And now I believe, no, we’ve got to go get lost. 

Keely: Yeah, look at what you just went through. The richness was in the discomfort of it.

Discomfort. Life has taught us both to embrace it.

I remember with clarity… as if it happened moments ago… sitting with my legs folded on the floor listening to a guided meditation. I was just about to adjust my posture to find a more comfortable pose, when I heard, “Notice the urge to shift or adjust your position.” Indeed. “Don’t.” I stopped before I fired a single muscle to move. I listened. “Stay with this discomfort.” My mind had been screaming, “This is terrible I can’t stand it. I have to move” but I stayed. The discomfort passed. I think about that when I want to react… just stay. Pause. Say nothing. Do nothing.  

When we sit with the raw edge of anxiety without immediately numbing it or seeking distraction, we discover that these feelings, however intense, cannot actually destroy us like we fear. It takes some radical courage to meet any negative experience with an open heart. If we don’t run from it, if we sit with discomfort in all of its phases, it may just transform us.

Keely: Well, I have thoughts anyway. 

Liz: Let’s go. 

Keely: Don’t you think, from your own experience, there is a mourning that we all go through, through each phase. A reidentification. And the more tightly we have aligned ourselves with the identity of our profession, the more significant it is. But after several moves and life iterations, I’ve learned we’re all so easily expendable. I don’t mean that in a fatalistic way.

Liz: No, but I think you can now see that who you are isn’t just dean of a college.

Keely: But who we are is more important. When I leave this place, will I have empowered enough people and connected with enough people, particularly their heart, right? To have made that difference. Because the things I do can be easily replaced and done by another. So the legacy is in the people.

Liz: And yet…

Keely: The programs themselves and the partnerships are leadership dependent every time. Those can’t be the legacies that we try to cling to, I guess, was my point, because it might be undone in the end.

I no longer try to cling to the things that are built. There’s an impermanence to all of it. Maybe the program looks differently. Maybe they will close it. But for a time, it had its purpose and its impact.

Liz: And it is now inspiring the work you’re doing, even if it looks completely different.

Keely: Absolutely.

Nothing lasts forever. Even the apprenticeship program developed under Keely’s leadership may some day be altered or closed. It doesn’t matter. The people who were involved will carry the feelings forward. They will be inspired. They will be transformed. In turn, they will inspire and transform others. 

While we are not naming it directly,  we are talking about leadership succession. Success wasn’t due to strategy, or leadership style as much as it was the connection and the trust built with people. Authentic connection and trust that they will carry forward and demand from future leaders …or grow into those very future leaders in their own right.

Keely: The playbook is worthless without people. It’s both – the people and the leadership.. It’s humbling, but both are absolutely essential ingredients. And the right team, not just any player.  I’m so lucky to be on the bus with incredible people right now – look at our Dyslexia Program in The Campus Lab School and our Reading Specialist Program.  Or look at the Teacher Diversification program.  We have graduated almost thirty educators in the Power of One program. 

Liz: Yeah. Back to who’s on the bus.

But the bus route changes. There are detours. The passengers change. These are inevitabilities.  We can try to guard against them, but that is futile. Change is part of the process. Thank goodness Keely found herself on a bus with Rae Ann when she arrived at Carlow. She stepped on that bus in a state of discomfort expecting to hold people off. She’d sit in her own row alone. She thought she would establish boundaries where life and work were compartmentalized. 

Keely: When I started at Carlow, I didn’t know what to do except hold boundaries. And then here came Rae Ann.. And then you have to let yourself be broken open, but in a very different way. Rae Ann passed away in September of 2022 following a battle with cancer.  It will be three years ago this month, and I still miss her everyday.  I still talk to her when I’m driving to work in the morning. Rae Ann would love what’s happening with our new college.  

Liz: She inspired it.

Keely: She had such a huge influence on my life in a very short period of time .We became great collaborators and even better friends. I sat at her house in December of my first year at Carlow (2017).  We were in her living room on the couch together over break working on a project after she said, “Hey, would you support this idea I have for an OCDEL proposal?” She was the impetus for the $12 million. The whole program is now named in her memory. And to be able to have a relationship with her daughter Gabi now is so special.

At work, there are relationships that are more personal than others. I just try to ensure there’s an intentionality about it all.  I’ve tried to learn through all of life’s failures and setbacks how to be a better person, a better leader.  I know now how to build the trust of a team and how to best empower those around me to be leaders.  As you know, I was diagnosed with cancer last year. It’s another story for another walk someday. It brought up so much fear and so much uncertainty, but the team at work was steadfast. It’s powerful to know that you are part of something bigger than yourself and that you have the support of so many incredible people who are on the bus with you.. I think leaning in to the discomfort and fear, this is life’s work.

As we learn to befriend our own difficult emotions, we naturally become more available to the teachers who appear in our lives. When we stop armoring ourselves against discomfort, we become receptive to the people and to the lessons they bring, so we can expand into our full radiance. 

Keely: It’s all so incredible to me. The people that we will meet, and maybe they all won’t stay long, but they can have a lasting positive impact. 

Liz: But they’re in your life for a reason. 

Keely: Yes,  There are also the ones who stay in your life and don’t leave, even when it gets hard.  They are uniquely special. And, there are even more people to meet, too, which has been a grace-filled experience for me.  Knowing that we haven’t yet met everyone who will influence us – who we will learn from. 

Liz: …which is why I’m taking this job. 

As the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Association of Independent Schools.

Liz: It is not about the position. It is not about that… And I had to really get clear on this. It is about the people I met. I have goosebumps even saying this, something made me feel like I’m supposed to work with these people. So much so that I had this sense that if they didn’t offer me the position, I was going to seek these people out to figure out how to work with them anyway. And I think that’s important.

Keely: There’s a knowing that I think you’ll take into this next role now. And I think you gave yourself the time to not rush into something.

Liz: Yeah, I don’t give myself credit for that. The universe gave me the time.

Keely: You want my two cents? You seem very more centered. I’ve even seen that since the start of your walks, though. Because at the start of your walks, like you said, what is my purpose and identity here? And now it’s almost like you’ve ground into yourself. There is a knowing in you. That’s what I try to do now, daily, not weekly. Connect again with the knowing. What is sacred? What’s the soul part of this work I should do?

Through discomfort and the challenging teachers who bring lessons we still need to learn, we find we are not the fragile beings we once believed ourselves to be. Each time we unhand the role of victim, let go of manufactured control, we drop deeper roots into the unshakeable ground of our own being. We are no longer blown off by life’s winds; we bend without breaking. 

Imperfect conditions and their challenges are the settings for our next opportunities.  Infinite possibilities to mine with the imperfect people whose paths we crossed and still carry with us.

I found Keely Baronak originally because I couldn’t bear to leave Grace as a toddler.  I drove to Bethany College one evening each week to teach a senior seminar. I’d leave early enough to stop at Chambers General Store and get a cheese and tomato sandwich before they closed at 5:00. Once back in my car, I’d unfold the wax paper that protected it. The papery percussion of the wrapping would fill the silence left when a child’s car seat is unoccupied. It was the best bridge between parenting and guiding the next generation of teachers. Even then, I was settling into myself instinctively. I can see now that I was dropping roots into my future self. As was Keely. How blessed we were to walk past each other in those empty hallways in the evenings and stop for a brief chat that would electrify our thinking. 

We are still dropping roots almost twenty years later. We are still identifying the bridges to what’s next. We are still finding the best people with whom to cross paths. It all remains electric.

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Every once in a while you read something that resonates with you, and you carry it around – pulling it out when you need it, but always having it tucked away in your mind. This is one… “Try to see your child as a seed that came in a packet without a label.  Your job is to provide the right environment and nutrients and to pull the weeds. You can’t decide what kind of flower you’ll get or in which season it will bloom.” Wendy Mogel, the author of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee shared this wisdom that I carry.

The teaching of the wildflower seeds asks us as parents to respect our children for the individuals they are.  My daughter may not have been able to read as soon as others did, but one day it clicked – letters made sounds – sounds made words and words had meaning. My job as her parent was simple –  provide the right environment where she could learn and recognize learning as a reward in and of itself — not keeping up with her classmates.  

It is hard to remember that we don’t get to decide what kind of flower will bloom or when that will happen. When we embrace that, how could we be disappointed? Or spend so much time worrying? 

Finally, after preaching the words I found leafing through Mogel’s wisdom, I decided to plant a wildflower garden this summer. It was difficult to find a packet of seeds with no label or promise of what was to come. In rows and rows of options, I found only one. I also found a moldy set of discarded bulbs in a ripped bag. I bought that too. I didn’t observe the way the sun played in my yard. I didn’t test the soil in various places. I didn’t analyze the clay or the acidity. I just picked a spot to which my eyes are naturally drawn. I cleared the grass in that spot and loosened the soil. I poured a bag of top soil over the loosened dirt and mixed my DYI compound. 

I dug small holes for the bulbs and then simply scattered the seeds around them. I watered them but not as regularly as I should have. I let them be. I was resolved that it may take years for me to enjoy the fruits or should I say the flowers of my labor. Each day as I walked out my patio door, I would glimpse their way. One morning, I noticed tall green shoots. The next there was a vine-like green tubing protruding from another spot. I only pulled the grass that tried to grow up again – ironic, since I cannot get grass to grow in other areas of the yard. I plucked the clover out. Otherwise, I let all that sprouted simply grow. 

I always deeply believed Mogel’s words, but I wasn’t truly living them until I planted my wildflower garden. I am so happy with every budding flower, every green leaf in all of their varieties… and the purple flowers that are just opening delight me. It doesn’t escape me when I tend my small garden that this is exactly how I should parent my daughters. Delighting in the unexpected ideas and kindnesses, marvelling at the way they grow, forgiving myself when I lose my balance standing up and step on a leaf. Unlike other planters, I didn’t arrange the color scheme, plant heights or trailing vines…this is a wildflower garden. I don’t control it, I care for it and I let it impress me.

When my former student, Chrissy Hoag (Knoff), asked if I wanted to pick flowers as an activity for our walk, I was exuberant. Yes, I would meet her and her son on a back road behind the airport in Bozeman, MT. I would not miss it. It would be a slight, subtle glimpse into being a grandparent for Chrissy had been like a daughter to me when I was a dorm mother at The Linsly School years ago. What I found on that dirt road  was a front row seat to a mother delighting in her sons’ curiosity.

Chrissy: Do you want to come see the castle flowers with me? Yeah. Okay. But watch running with your claws.

Child: Look at these red flowers. 

Chrissy: Those are cool. You could pick those. Do you see the… You could pick it way down here. 

Child: This? Cool.

Chrissy: But remember, down at the bottom. 

Child: Got one. Let’s pick some more of these I want these. 

Chrissy: Okay.

Chrissy: Here, can I show you a different flower that’s in here that I love? These are called paper flowers. Do you see how it looks like a piece of paper? But go all the way down to the bottom. 

Child: I am. 

Chrissy: Okay.

Child: I go right down to the bottom. 

Chrissy: But feel it. It feels different than the other flowers, huh?

Child: Oh, good. It’s like popcorn.

Just as natural paper flowers surprise us with their pointed petals unfolded in their own time — our children reveal their curiosities and personalities in seasons we cannot rush. There’s something deeply humbling about this uncertainty, each child holding secrets we cannot predict or control; each child deserving the richest soil our hearts can offer. As a social worker, Chrissy knows all too well that not every child experiences such trust.

Chrissy: CPS is this entity that I didn’t really understand. I didn’t have kids. I didn’t know anybody had ever dealt with CPS, but it was this idea of being a social worker, if you will. It changed my life, and I saw some really intense things that I don’t think I ever will unsee or unfeel. And it really pushed me into this idea of, you need to do more.

Liz: I have to ask, when you say you need to do more, do you mean you weren’t doing enough? Was it that feeling? That treading water and the water’s rising?

Chrissy: Yeah. And for the kids, for these people going into the system for the lack of the…

I mean, the system is broken, not because there aren’t great people.

I moved out here when I was 40, I had gone through a lot with being in child welfare and had a very particularly impactful case where a father died from a heroine overdose.

I was the last one to see him with his child the day before he overdosed. And it was just a really impactful case. I think about that kid a lot…. Right after that happened, I took a minute, stepped back, telescoped out, and was like, I think I need to think about my life in the way that I want it, not just this grind to keep doing something next. 

I have to wonder if I chose to do a series of walks outside because I could simply no longer breathe on the treadmill of next and next and next.

Liz: Do you think your experience with social work impacts how you mother?

Chrissy: Yeah. And I think, honestly, I mean, I had him when I was 45. I was way more aware. …the level of gratitude to have him is pretty cool.

It is a whole other story to think about what I went through because I was 44 when we started the process. She said that your best chance of having a healthy baby is a donor egg because I can’t harvest your eggs here. They’d only do it past 42 in Montana, and we’d have to go to a different state, and we’d have to blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I had a plan. I was on a one-year trajectory. We’d pick out an egg donor and think about it for a night. And then the next day, all of her eggs, the lots of eggs would be gone. 

And we joke about it. We were like, it’s like Tinder for eggs.

So the first egg completely failed, didn’t even stick at all. And then we had one egg left. And I remember when she called me and she said, well, it didn’t work. And I said, okay, sign me up for the next one. And she was like, well, wait a minute. Let’s talk to Adam, your husband. And I said, yeah, we can talk to him, but we’re going to do the next one. 

Wait a minute? Nope. I know all too well that determination to have a child. I wasn’t 45. I was only 35, but still considered ‘advanced age.’ You find yourself bargaining with time, with your body, with whatever forces might be listening once you embark through the maze of infertility treatments. You travel through your days with syringes and hormones – scanning every public bathroom for the red disposal box. You learn there are enough follicles, but not as many eggs as we would like, but still you hold fast to hope. Friends and family hover at the edges with well-meaning questions you can’t answer …yet. After embryos are transplanted in a very sterile, clinical, scientific setting, you shift back to acupuncture, meditation and bargains. You research obsessively: what’s a good first beta hCg level, how quickly should it double, what number is ideal? You visualize that number. 25, 50, 200 – your future being quantified. You do all the things you can – like a die-hard fanatic moving through superstitions before the big game – because doing nothing at all is incomprehensible.

Chrissy: And, yeah, three years later, here he is. 

Liz: Had you given up on motherhood at one point?

Chrissy: Oh, yeah. Yup. I really did not think I was ever going to get married. I didn’t think I was ever going to have kids. And I had a very good friend of mine that I’ve known for many years. Her name’s Carol. And at one point, I think it was right around age 30 or so I said to her, I was just really upset, I’m never going to get married, and I’m never going to have kids, and never, never, never, never. And she said, Well, I can’t tell you what is going to happen. Who can? But she said, I can tell you that if you want to be with kids, and you want to work with kids, and you want to be around kids, … just make it happen. And she said, You can still feel really fulfilled if you are around kids.

Liz: I love the advice that if this is what makes your heart sing, make it happen.

Chrissy: So the journey has been pretty wild. I mean, one of the things that’s been so cool is actually so many years later, now this June, finishing my master’s in social work was pretty emotional for me. I think about when I started this so many years ago. And it’s wild to now be doing what I’m doing and weirdly feeling like I can advocate so much better, I think, because I can say, well, I have a master’s in social work and I have a clinical license and people listen to you differently then when you just say, I have ‘15 years of experience being in some pretty tough spots and having to advocate really hard for people.’

Chrissy: But I think also having a tiny human and knowing that you want them to be a good person, too, has changed a lot for me.

Liz: There’s something about having your own and having the feeling of I want what’s best, and I’ve seen what can happen.

Chrissy: Yeah.

Liz: So I want to make it better for everybody, or at least as many as I can. So you established …

Chrissy: a pediatric social work position where I really advocated to have some support for our perinatal population, mostly because I think, one, it’s just really lacking, and two, it’s just really important, and resources are hard here.

and lots of people are moving here, and they don’t realize we don’t have anything. We don’t have services. We don’t have Behavioral Health Support.

As we talked about the families she was helping, the first responders who needed their own support and the children we couldn’t save try as we might,  I couldn’t help but think of the wildflowers. The tall sunflowers that reach as high as they can, that turn their faces to the sun no matter what. The tunnels and safe places and shade they create by growing together even with weeds growing at their roots. 

Child: There’s another tunnel right here. 

Chrissy: Oh, that’s cool. 

Child: And more tunnels. 

Chrissy: Those are shorter tunnels. I bet you could get through those tunnels all by yourself.

Child: And you come. I move this stuff for you.

Chrissy: What, babe?

Child: I moved this stuff for you.

Chrissy: You moved that stuff for me? Oh, thanks, sweet love. 

Child: You’re welcome.

I am reminded of my earlier walk with Sharon – that we ache to return to these early days when our children relished our company and wanted us to come too. We marvel at the adults they are becoming. We delight as their curiosities bloom into passions. No longer able to pull weeds and water the ground as they plant themselves in other areas, we advise and support. But… sometimes… in rare moments… as happened just this summer … Grace or Ella reach over to hold my hand as we walk. Not wanting to make a big deal of it, I silently send up a prayer of gratitude for the reminder of their innocent, sweet love.

They are always our children. As is my habit, I joke a bit about that.

Liz: I have to tell you, I have a 21 and a 17-year-old and dating a 65-year-old. And the one thing I say is I I should have given up the diaper bag. Everybody still needs a wipe and a snack and a cool drink.

Chrissy: Yes. Yeah.

…especially when you are tending your garden in the heat of the sun, nurturing the children who burst into your days like an unexpected summer thunderstorm—delighting you with their wonder, frustrating you with their fierce independence, amazing you with sudden wisdom. Did I tell you my wildflower garden is blooming against this merciless August heat? I watch it all unfold and I cannot wait to see what blooms next and what transforms.

My simple unmarked packet wildflower garden teaches me what I need to know about motherhood: these two souls entrusted to me—my beautifully impossible gifts— will bloom exactly as they are meant to, in their own time, in their own magnificent way.

Child: You’re welcome.

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There are seasons to this adult life that arrive with the predictability of weather patterns—each decade bringing its own particular storm system. There’s the decade when your weekends disappear into a blur of white tulle and champagne toasts, when every Saturday means squeezing into another bridesmaid dress or clutching a bridal shower gift all chased by baby showers where you marvel at how much stuff one tiny human apparently needs. 

Naturally the decade of sports, dance and science fairs follows close on its heels when your social circle revolves around bleacher conversations, playdate planning, and last-minute carpools.  Adult friendships are forged and sometimes lost on the sidelines.

I find myself in what I’m calling the “How are your parents?” decade. Every conversation finds its way to that loaded question, followed by discussions about assisted living choices, medication schedules, and the peculiar art of finding caregivers while we ask ourselves shouldn’t we be taking care of the people who took care of us? 

In that first decade I found myself thinking “When is it my turn?” In the next, “Will my turn at this ever end?” and then “Oh no, it’s my turn.” There is something about the fact that we all go through it that makes us minimize or downplay our emotions.

While I expected this particular benchmark to stretch ahead of me like a marathon, my turn ended up being more like an unexpected sprint—barely a year of racing home from work to get someone to a doctor’s appointment or befriending the pharmacist for medication packets before I lost both parents and my step-mother in what felt like a macabre game of musical chairs, or should I say, hospice beds. It was just my turn. 

I had some naive notion I could write a blog that could help other people be better prepared when their turns come. I have realized that is not possible. There is no advice, no wisdom, no checklist that works universally. Turns out, that’s like trying to write instructions for falling in love in that first season. Some experiences resist being tidied up into helpful bullet points.

On a walk with two life-long friends who have both lost their mothers, Jodie and Michaela, I found the comfort of leaning into the emotions specifically with two friends who knew my parents well. We have college roommates, sport-induced adult friendships, and even work friends who all support us, but there is a warm hug in the friendships that formed when our mothers and fathers were integral in our daily lives. Jodie and Mich were loved by, provided for and scolded by my parents almost as much as I was.

It feels rich to share our stories with people who knew our mothers almost as long as we did.

Liz: I don’t think I understood what it was like to lose a parent until I lost a parent. You made the comment that when Gigi’s dad died, you had this feeling of…”that can’t happen to me.”

Jodie: Not in the way like, it can’t happen to me. Like, it’s not going to happen to me. But that cannot happen to me. I would not be able to live through it.

Mich: Yeah, I know. Dan lost his parents in December and March. Even though I’d been in the family for 25 years, they weren’t my parents. And I don’t… It sounds crass, but they weren’t my parents, you know. But my mom dying, I have never had anybody, any relative die, because I never had grandparents. They were already dead before I was born. So I never had any of that. 

Jodie: I feel it all the time for Carter. I just don’t know. I can’t imagine. I always say he’s alone. And I couldn’t imagine how that feels. And that’s why I think I was always so quiet around you two, because I don’t know what else to say besides I’m sorry. Because I can’t even imagine how that feels. And the only thing that I can say is I’m sorry. And that just seems so little.

Before Carter became the love of Jodie’s life and the father of her children, he was my brother from another mother. Living just three houses away we spent long summer hours together in the middle of the street wondering how cars would dare to drive down Poplar Avenue and disrupt our games. He lost his mother to cancer 32 years ago and lost his father 7 years ago. I didn’t support Carter enough when his mom died. I wasn’t there for him like I would be now. I didn’t know. As I said, you don’t know what it is like to lose a parent until you do. The thing to remember is that here is no expiration date.

Liz: Somebody could tell me today, I am so sorry you’re living without your mom and your dad, and it would mean as much as if you had said it five minutes after.

Mich: I think I wanted somebody to just say, “I’ve got you.”

When Mich’s mother died, they had a very small service for her. I was one of two people who attended who were not relatives. I think I forced Mich’s hand to include me. I knew what it meant to me to have friends who attended my father’s funeral. I wanted to return the favor. If I am being honest, I needed a space to show up. Attending a funeral is easier than finding other ways to show support. It is a tradition. Our bodies know how to move through traditions. We know to show up there.

Liz: So who is a funeral for?

Jodie: I don’t know. You know what my favorite part of your mom’s was? That picture of her. I mean, I think that said it all. And I think if people would just have walked in and seen that and turned around, that’s all that was necessary. That picture of her, I loved it. I mean, because that’s who she was. She looked so happy in that picture. I loved that.

Liz: She survived enough of her friends that she knew she wanted a party, not a funeral.

I look at that picture when I write. While my diplomas don’t hang in my home office, my mother’s hot tub picture does. I love that Jodie noticed that detail. I love that the picture brought joy to my friend. That is how we remember our mothers in the small moments that made them the happiest.

Mich: I kept meaning to get recipes. She always made this bread that both my girls adored. And I remember we had Alex make it with her a couple of times. So Anneliese and Alex had written down some of the stuff. And I remember that it was on the refrigerator at her house. It was on a post-it note. And then it disappeared. I always thought, Oh, next time. I’ll get it next time.

Liz: Well, we all know my mom couldn’t cook, so there were no recipes. Like, none.

Carter would remember that my mom was famous for burning the bread. He could look out his back door and see a baking sheet with flaming triangles of pita bread. Framed in my own kitchen now is a crossstitch I gave her years ago. Dinner will be ready when the smoke alarm goes off. I will proudly tell you that I summon my own children in a similar way. They never understand why I am smiling as I run to open the back door, so the smoke can clear. It’s just a little hello from Mom. I can almost hear her laugh lovingly at me in revenge. 

Jodie: There’s just so many moments now, at this age, that you just want your mom. There’s been so many times that I just want to call her.

Liz: I think there were so many moments at every age. But you could always call her.

Jodie: Right.

Mich: I had talked to her every day on the phone, every day. That was my… I drove home, picked up the phone.

Liz: I have my mom’s phone. It’s in the drawer. Sometimes I still text her. I think the last text was “Today was really shitty.” Just because that’s who I’m going to send it to.

Jodie: My mom’s phone wasn’t turned off for a long time. And so when my dad had to… If his phone was lost or he couldn’t find it, or if his was dead, he would call from my mom’s, and that would just freak me out. 

Mich: Oh, boy. 

Liz: When you guys were talking about messages you had from your moms my messages are, I took my meds. I regret that in the end I was managing my parents instead of being with them. 

I read Being Mortal years ago.  Atul Gawande taught me something profound when he wrote about asking his aging father what mattered most to him—not what the doctors recommended, but what brought him joy. His father’s answer was beautifully simple: he wanted to be able to eat chocolate ice cream and watch football on television. Not the sugar-free version of living, but the real thing. I had taken advantage of that advice and asked my dad what brought him joy. He too said eating ice cream, but he wasn’t sure that was a complete list. I wasn’t sure if he wasn’t just influenced by the example. We never revisited that conversation, but I never once denied the call from him to run to Dairy Queen late in the evening. I thought I had time to have that conversation with my mom. I would assume her answer would have been to travel, but she still loved life after that last trip that left her confused in LaGuardia airport. I wish I would have asked her, but my mother had internalized this. As a doctor, she knew the value of quality of life and counseled families masterfully at the end of life.

Liz: I feel like you guys got it right. Don’t you feel like you got a lot of time with your mom at the end? And wasn’t there a time where she went from being combative and confused to just being- funny. With really good skin.

Jodie: Right with beautiful skin. Yes. We just took on a new attitude with her, too. We just went with whatever she said, and it was a lot easier then. And like I said, we just laughed a lot.

Jodie: What I’m most happy about is everyone says I have a lot of her characteristics. I act just like her. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I’m like, “Oh, gosh, that’s my mom.” And I love it. Carter will say sometimes, That’s just like your mother. And I always go, “Thank you.” So I’m pretty happy about that.

Mich: Everything that dad and I talked about for the year afterwards, was constantly the same story about how they met, how he left Austria because he failed an exam at medical school, and they said he wouldn’t be able to take it for another year. He wasn’t sure what he could do next. And then he saw something about being a resident in England, but didn’t speak a word of English, so he took his dictionary, took the train, then took a boat to get to England, and ended up somewhere, not in the same hospital as my mom, but somewhere close. And he just goes on and on about how they met. And dad was supposed to go out with somebody else, but he chose not to. Or mom was, I can’t remember. I should know it by now. But they just happened to end up in the same place at the same time. And he said, for a year, they dated with a dictionary, an English-German dictionary. He said, the first time we spent together, we sat for five hours, and neither of us knew what either one was saying.

I love the thought of Mich’s parents falling in love without speaking a word to one another. My parents were in the same study group in medical school until my dad kicked her out because his buddy wanted in. I guess dating him was the consolation prize. The stories are legends now. No opportunity to fact check or correct the intricacies – they will just echo about in our memory. This summer, four years after her mother died, Mich’s father died.

Mich: We carried on a lot of conversations early in May. And then when I got there later, he had really lost his voice. And then he was trying to talk, and he was then starting to say things in German and English. And then he had no voice at all, but he had things he had to say. There were a couple of times he grabbed my hand, and he was earnest, very earnest in what he needed to say. I don’t know what he said, but he looked me in the eye, and he’d held my hand. That was enough.

Liz: Well, you gave him the chance to say it, even if you didn’t hear it or it makes sense to him.

Mich: And we didn’t dismiss him. We, what was that dad? It wasn’t like, oh, okay. Because I think he would have, even where he was at, I think he would have felt dismissed. And I certainly didn’t want him to feel that way.

Liz: I told you, I have a friend who’s done death and dying. And he says the three things we’re supposed to say are Thank you. I love you, and I forgive you. And that that’s all the person needs to cross. And I bet your dad needed to know on some level that you forgave him.

That friend is William Peters, the Founder and Executive Director of the Shared Crossing Project. He offers a profound framework for end-of-life conversations that transforms how we approach these final moments. Rather than focusing solely on what we’re losing, Peters suggests reorienting ourselves through three essential expressions: thank you, I love you, goodbye. “Thank you for being my mom” shifts our attention from loss to appreciation—acknowledging all the wonderful connections and experiences we’ve shared rather than dwelling on death. The gratitude statement becomes a celebration of the relationship’s gifts, honoring its fullness.

He explained to me that I might include “I forgive you as well if that’s necessary, and it most likely is in every relationship.” Forgiveness must come before we can offer an authentic “I love you.” Without addressing the times we’ve been harmed or disappointed, our expressions of love might seem incomplete. “I love you inclusive of any harm or meanness—when you weren’t the best form of yourself—I love you.” 

The final goodbye offers a modicum of control in an otherwise overwhelming moment. While literature might tell us otherwise, death is not the enemy—it’s the most natural part of life. There is no battle to be fought, only a transition to be embraced with grace and presence. It seems to me there is so much wisdom in the thread of thank you, I love you, goodbye. I’ll have to ask William to walk with me.

Liz: Without her generation, it feels different. Have you experienced that yet?

Mich: Generation in the family?

Liz: My mom and her brothers have all died now.

Jodie: Well, I’m not quite there yet, but that’s my biggest fear is that I’m not going to consider Wheeling home anymore because I consider my mom and dad home, and I am just so nervous about that, of not wanting to come back to Wheeling because it’s going to be too hard for me not having them here.

Mich: Even with your siblings here?

Jodie: Yeah, because I just think that I’m just going to have that big hole.

Liz: Now I feel like I can leave. It’s very clear to me every day I stay in the three years since mom died, I used them as an excuse because it was easier to stay than leave. Now I’m using Ella in school as an excuse. I’m the adult. If I really want to pull her and move somewhere, I should do it. But I think that’s part of my problem right now is without them, I don’t feel like I have a home. 

Mich: My parents had always been, Go, just go. But once there were children, I never knew my grandparents, so it was very important for me for my children to know their grandparents. And that was what kept us in Wheeling. That was why we’re still here.

Jodie: As soon as we had kids, my mom and dad came down every morning, especially my dad, every day. And then he took Collin to Easter Seals and to all his appointments so I didn’t have to take off. And then when we moved to Fairmont, they were down there every weekend or every other weekend. And then just as we moved further, they would just come down for every holiday.

Jodie: I do think that the family will stay together, and Wheeling will be the home base Yes. But I just think it’s going to be really different for me coming and calling this home like I do now.

Mich: Yeah, because your parents are home. Our parents were home.

Mich switches to the past tense. In that grammatical shift we sense the uncertainty of our footing, the uneasiness of not knowing where home is or who we are once we lose both of our parents. Am I still a daughter? 

I am. And while someone else now lives in the homes my parents inhabited at the end of their lives and also in the home where I grew up, I know I still have the home from my childhood. I can find it in these lifelong friends. People who knew me when I was Lizz – with two z’s for pizzazz – and still thought I was beautiful with braces and a senseless perm. People who could only reach me on a shared land line at night or through a note passed surreptitiously under a wooden desk. People who played ping pong in my basement… who know that calling me “Elizabeth” with a slight lilt at the end still makes me think I am in trouble. 

Fifteen years ago a group of these childhood friends initiated an annual reunion. There is no typical posturing one would expect at such a reunion. It is much more authentic than that. It is as if we walk over the threshold of the door and transition into our sixteen year old selves… and we are home.

In all those seasons throughout life, we lost touch. We followed other paths. I don’t know their middles, but they were there at the beginning and they are there as we experience the endings. 

The beautiful, messy truth is this: there’s no universal playbook for life or its details. No matter what – the seating chart for the wedding is a pain in the ass, the coach won’t always be fair to your kid like he is to someone else’s, the packing list for the college dorm room will be too long and still incomplete, and the medication list for improved quality of life will have its contra-indicators… but somehow we all muddle through, and it works out…  or it becomes essential fodder for a great story at the next reunion.  

In all the seasons of our lives, but especially in this one as we move out of the caregiver role … first to our children and then to our parents if we are lucky… I hope we all live by Atul Gawande’s advice and articulate what gives us joy in this life. Ask yourself, “What really matters?” What is your version of eating ice cream during the big game?… regardless of the season. 

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In 1995 my love affair with the moon began. Professor Eleanor Duckworth introduced us. As part of her T440 (Tea for 40) course at Harvard Graduate School of Education, she required us to keep a moon journal. She asked us to write down every time we saw the moon – what time it was, what day it was, where it was in the sky and what it looked like. We could draw what we saw. We could simply write. Regardless, we needed to pay attention to the moon … consistently.

It was hard to explain to my dad that I was moon watching as part of my masters at Harvard. Let me put the assignment in another light for you. She made us, as educators, become learners together. She asked us to learn about an object we thought we already knew. She didn’t tell us anything to watch for, nor give us a rubric for how to get an A in moon observation. She just asked us to pay attention and to keep a moon journal.

The assignment wasn’t about astronomy. It was about learning to be learners. Stumbling around Belmont, MA in the dark, I was experiencing firsthand what my students feel: the discomfort of not knowing, the thrill of discovery, the way understanding emerges slowly from patient observation rather than quick instruction.

This brings us to one of Duckworth’s most counterintuitive insights: not knowing is far more valuable than knowing… and I would add, far more fun. Think about the last time you watched or listened to a young child encounter something new. They ask. They tinker. They hypothesize. “Mountains actually change shape when you drive around them.” or “There are more steps going up than going down.”  When children wonder and come up with their own ideas, it’s the same fundamental process that scientists, inventors or artists do. Duckworth calls this “the having of wonderful ideas.”

Liz

We were just talking about Eleanor Duckworth and her work of the Having of Wonderful Ideas. And the second piece of that is, and kids should have a wonderful time having them. And I feel like that’s what this is. 

Jane: We try. 

If you want to see Duckworth’s theories of how people learn in practice, look no further than the MAKESHOP, developed under the leadership of Jane Werner at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.  Just like Duckworth’s moon-watchers, visitors to MAKESHOP don’t come to be told facts. They come to explore, to tinker, to have wonderful ideas. 

Jane

I always say that a three-year-old loves to sand. I mean, I’ve watched a three-year-old just sand away. Everybody can be makers. The day that I saw a grandfather sitting and making a pin cushion for his wife, I was like, Yeah, we got something here. This is pure gold. 

And I keep thinking, you can do a maker space with nothing.

Liz

With nothing?

Jane

Yeah. Really. Cardboard, some yarn.

It’s not the sophistication of the materials that matters—it’s what children (of all ages) do with them. A child who discovers that cardboard can be folded to create strength, or that a broken toy can become the foundation for something entirely new, is engaging in the same fundamental process of inquiry that drives all scientific discovery. 

Liz

But you don’t need all that. You don’t need the circuit kits.

Jane

Yeah. These are actually stuff that kids have taken apart.

Liz

Yeah.

Jane

Here. … Look at this. Actually, I like that part of it, right? It’s like, oh, my gosh, you can do this. This is stuff that you can do at home. How simple is this? A little motor out of a toy. Now you’re ready to rock and roll. And some batteries.

Jane engages in the process of making a circuit herself. When I asked Jane to walk, I knew we would need to stop and play. We were in a children’s museum afterall. Our inner child never lives very far beneath the surface wanting to mess about and wonder in our own thinking… if we let it…and we really should let it much more often. Listen to her thinking…

Jane

I’m curious about what this one does. These are all new. There you go. They go slow. One of these goes very fast. Hmm. I did that wrong. Is that going to work? Yes.

Liz

Wow.

Jane

See, that, you should have videotaped. I put a switch in between. It’s fun, right?

Liz

And it started with $5,000. Yeah.

Jane

And we didn’t really need $5,000. We bought a couple of sewing machines. We bought some tools.

Jane explains how the MAKESHOP began.

Jane

It’s a little bit of a longer story. I went to the second Maker Fairs at San Mateo. I had a friend who was a neighbor of Dale Dougherty , who was the founder of the maker faires, and the whole maker movement out in California. He said to me, “My neighbor’s doing this really interesting thing that I think you’d be really into. Why don’t you come out?” So I did. I needed to go out to San Francisco for something else, but then I tacked this on. And I was blown away. There was one whole tent that just had sewing machines and piles of old clothes, and people were reusing the cloth. I’m a sewer, so I was like, That’s so cool. I can’t even describe it. 

Back at the museum in a meeting with the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University (ETC), someone

proposed this idea that was basically a maker thing. “Well, I want to do that.” So he and my friend from ETC, we all got together. I said, I have $5,000. I’d like to try this out this summer. So we actually put it in “The Garage.” It took off. Adults and children were here, then it suddenly was this thing.

When she says it took off, she means it.

Jane

I think we’re up to over 400 maker spaces across the United States, actually, now that we’ve been helping to put in not only schools, but hospitals.

Liz

So 400 that you’ve helped to put in?

Jane

Yeah, because we partnered for a while there with Google, and Google was funding them, and that was a great partnership. But each of the schools, each of the spaces are unique to the school or the institution. We have one in Western Psych. We have one at Children’s Hospital here. Those are two very different spaces. We also do professional development because these things do not go anywhere unless the teachers are really dedicated to it.

This is what we were doing in T440, learning to be dedicated to responsive teaching. Eleanor Duckworth would sit cross-legged on the floor, a collection of ordinary objects spread between her and an eight-year-old child who had been invited to explore with her. Around them, up to fifty graduate students leaned forward in their chairs, notebooks forgotten, watching intently as Duckworth’s gentle questions unlocked the child’s thinking. “What do you notice about what happens when you…?” she asked, her voice carrying genuine curiosity and then listening as if she’s never heard anything more important, asking follow-up questions that honor the child’s reasoning while gently pushing thinking forward as they are messing about. This is learning as it actually happens: messy, nonlinear and absolutely real. It takes patience. It takes practice. It leaves room for all kinds of minds to show off their learning.

Jane

Everybody learns differently, right? So I always have to just laugh a little bit when people say, I’m neurodivergent. I’m thinking, so am I, and so are you, and so are you. Because we all learn differently. 

We do all learn differently. Duckworth explained in a Harvard convocation, “Helping people learn involves honoring their confusion. This is what keeps minds working. I’ve found that if one idea is presented as the right answer, thinking stops.” Thinking doesn’t stop at the MAKESHOP. Indeed by looking at everything from the eyes of a child, Werner and her staff create the moments that unlock thinking. Ella likes to remind me “Not everything has to be a teachable moment, Mom,” but I disagree. If we choose, we can learn something from almost every moment. 

So let me take this moment to learn more about the ETC, a masters program and  interdisciplinary research center founded by two co-directors; Randy Pausch, a Computer Science professor (and yes – the man who delivered his inspirational Last Lecture), and Don Marinelli, a Drama Professor. What a pairing – drama and computers. To quote the CMU website, “To this day, the ETC is one of the most inventive and impactful programs in the world. Randy Pausch liked to say that the ETC is the world’s best playground, with an electric fence.”

It perfectly captures what Duckworth knew about wonderful ideas—learners thrive when we allow them to mess about while taking their questions and their ideas seriously. It is what is happening under Jane’s leadership at the Children’s Museum and in her partnerships with the ETC.

Jane

We’re just doing stuff and saying, Isn’t this interesting? … you take it from here. I mean, that’s why every maker space has to be different because everybody has different talents. They have different viewpoints. They’ve had different lived experiences. So use that and then just try to find the next edge. Just keep trying to find the next edge. So that’s what Museum Lab is all about, is looking for the next edge. 

Liz

It feels like it’s a make shop on steroids.

Jane

That’s exactly how I describe it. For older kids. 

She looks for the next edge – pushes the envelope – but makes sure the experience offers everything it can for the teachable moment. It is how they build exhibits.

Jane

So that’s what we do. We test and prototype.

Liz

So how much input or how often are you sitting in a meeting when an exhibit is being designed?

Jane

Not as much as I used to. I mean, that was my whole thing. But now I try to stay out of it because it’s not fair. We have the Charlie Harper setting up right now. Do you know Charlie Harper? 

Liz: I do not. 

I’ll spare you the hours I spent learning about Charlie Harper as I was writing this, but as I explored his art, I knew Eleanor and Jane would be proud.

Jane: He’s a West Virginian. He actually grew up in Buchannon. And he became a big-time graphic designer in the ’60s. He’s big with the mid-century folks.  He did all the National Park posters. If you saw his work, you would be like, Oh, yeah.

So we have a partnership with his estate and his son, and we did this exhibit on Charlie Harper and Biodiversity. I really stayed out of it. They did the prototyping, and I have to say it’s the first time in a long time I went back to them and asked, “We’re traveling it, right? This isn’t good enough if we’re going to be doing biodiversity. This is a great exhibit about Charlie Harper, but very little about biodiversity.” To their great credit, they went back in and are prototyping some exhibits around biodiversity. 

Because if it’s not right, we’re selling one thing, and they’re getting something else. And people notice. We have to make sure that our quality stays really high. For kids. I mean, it’s for kids. 

When Jane says, “It’s for kids,” that means it is even more important to get it right. You can hear it in her voice. I am not sure that is the case when others say it. It should be. 

There is an irony to the MAKESHOP and its location within the museum.

Jane

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was here. We actually took that out. I thought, “Oh, my God, Pittsburghers are going to hate me forever.” And then we put the maker space in here.

Jane

I always say he laid the groundwork for the rest of the place because he was just so influential in all of our lives, all the people who really expanded the museum. I really learned a lot from Fred. Fred was like the stars and the moon. But I love Joanne because Joanne was just like the water and the Earth. Every time she saw you, she would grab you and she’d say, I love you. You know how much I love you? And she meant it. She was just very funny and she was straightforward. She said things like, “Don’t make him a saint. Don’t ever make him a saint.” I’m like, “Okay, I got it. I won’t.”

Everybody says, “Oh, what would Fred do? What would Fred say?” I’m like, What a mistake. I mean, you have missed Fred Rogers completely if that’s what you’re thinking. He wanted you to do great things for kids. So what are you going to do? And what are you going to say? I think that that’s the better question.

Great questions, Jane. What are you going to do for children? This is why our world needs Jane Werner. She has kept childhood front and center since she began at the museum in 1991. 

Jane

They called about this job being the Director of Exhibits and Programs. I thought, That’ll be easy. They’re a little place. I’ll do that for a couple of years. I’m thinking about having another kid. It’ll be easy. Easy peasy. Then I’ll do something else. And then here, one day to the next.

Well, we were 20,000 square feet. Actually, when I started, we weren’t even that, because we only had the basement and the second floor. The first floor was still history and landmarks. So it was little. It was 5,000 square feet total, let’s say. And now, that whole complex is ’80, and this one is ’40.

The larger complex is the Children’s Museum and the smaller one is the Museum Lab designed with middle school students in mind. Both are the very places where children mess about to learn and adults listen just as Mister Rogers and Professor Duckworth did – both cross legged on the floor, chins resting on their hands, eyes as wide as the child’s with authentic wonder. 

It’s time to push the edges again, so Jane’s team is developing a new exhibit with Eli Lilly on character. 

Jane

We want to explore some other things. This character thing is really interesting to me.

Liz

Especially when you talk about the mental health piece.

Jane

Right. I mean, it’s fascinating. And we’re working with the Fred Rogers Company. And the discussions about character I didn’t think would be so contentious. I don’t know why. It’s fascinating to me.

Who is to say what’s right and what’s wrong? I mean, there was a moment in time where a younger person than I am said “You can be too compassionate.” I was like, “I’m sorry?” She responded, “Well, if you give too much of yourself away, then you don’t have any compassion for yourself.” I could not understand this. The more we talked about it, the more I understood what she was talking about. “That is not my experience. My experience is if you do an act of compassion, it actually comes back to you. It’s not that it takes anything away from you, but it ‘s what actually enriches you as maybe even more than the person that you feel you’re doing it for.” 

I left wondering if Jane has any idea how her focus on children and learning have enriched generations of “children.” And I hope it has all enriched her life, maybe even more. This walk reminds me that kids don’t need answer keys in the back of the book… things are rarely right or wrong exclusively… and wrong is just a more enriching path of learning. There is no wrong way to be a maker… no wrong way to walk through a children’s museum… no wrong way to observe the moon. 

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I didn’t set out to have Mister Rogers be such a backbone of so many of my walks, but that was shortsighted of me. Of course these walks were invoking our loving neighbor who laced up his tennis shoes and donned his cardigan. It was after all a series of walks through my extended neighborhood – the people in my life who had taught me something… who are still teaching me something. It became a chance to give back to some of those people in the spirit of Mister Rogers, who understood that children – and adults – flourish when they feel genuinely seen and heard.

Jeff: When I first moved to Pittsburgh in 1994 as a grad student at Carnegie Mellon, he was, of course, still alive, and he was still making his show. He retired, I think, in about 2000, maybe 2001. I was by then working at Shady Side Academy, and I was invited by a student to his graduation party. His parents were both producers at WQED, the station that made Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. And in fact, his mother, like many of the people featured on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, was just someone who worked there, and was asked, “Will you play a part?” So she was the important, but little seen, Mrs. McFeely, So I go to this graduation party and I see Fred Rogers standing there. 

Liz: In a cardigan? 

Jeff: No, in a sport coat. 

I had grown up worshiping that show and I was feeling heart palpitations. Like, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, He’s here.” I thought, I’m not going to be that guy. I’m not going to go up to him. I’m not going to say, I love you so much. I’m going to give him his space. And then the boy’s mother, Mrs. McFeely, brought him over and said, “Fred, I need to introduce you to Jeff Suzik. He’s Michael’s favorite teacher.” And he said, “Isn’t that nice?” And then she, with intent, moved away. And I got to have a 20 – 25 minute conversation with him by myself.

A dream come true. A hero in his presence. A moment preserved not just in his memory but in the toys that grace his bookshelves in the office of Dr. Jeff Suzik, Director of Schools for the Cranbrook Educational Community.

Liz: What do you remember?

Jeff: That he was exactly the person who we saw on TV. He was the most authentically that. It wasn’t an act. He wasn’t talking down to children or being saccharine or anything else. That’s who he was. And it was just a wonderful, wide-ranging conversation about children and their needs, what they deserve from us, what developmentally they should expect, how to partner with parents. 

And then I said, just as part of the conversation, “So are you enjoying retirement?” Remember, this was like 2001, so a long time ago. And he  said, “Oh, yes, I am. But I would really not categorize myself, Jeff, as being retired. So I’m working on a lot of projects.” I wouldn’t have known this, but he was then on the cusp of early development of Daniel Tiger. And he said, “The most recent thing I’ve done is I just launched my website. And it’s www.misterrogers.org. And I do hope that you’ll visit me in this new neighborhood.” 

Liz: Oh, I love that. 

Jeff: And then I learned later when I returned to Pittsburgh to lead Falk, that Falk had been the school that he had chosen for his son.

Falk Laboratory School. The place that had drawn Jeff back to Pittsburgh to be its Director in 2014. How I wish we had a recording of that dialogue of two men who honor childhood as a distinct stage of life…and who share a vision for a better future created by the very children in whom they were investing their lives’ work: Mister Rogers through educational television and Dr. Suzik through independent education in some atypical settings. You see, Cranbrook comprises schools, plural, and an art museum, an institute of science and a graduate art academy all sharing resources on a 319 acre campus. Indeed, in his website neighborhood, Jeff offers visitors “an enthusiastic welcome to Cranbrook Schools, where we believe that a childhood and adolescence filled with wonder, discovery, and curiosity is the greatest and most enduring gift a person can receive in their lifetime.” Mister Rogers would like that.

Liz: What do you think Mister Rogers would make of Cranbrook?

Jeff: I think that he would…That’s a great question. I think that he would recognize the elementary school’s inherently child-centered way of educating, I think he would appreciate its long-standing, fundamental and foundational commitment to “specials” classes (art, music, movement, technology, drama – things like that) and to children being given a lot of hands-on opportunities to learn.  Because while the upper levels of Cranbrook are pretty traditional pedagogically, and that’s something I’m eager and committed to working on, the elementary school has always been more expansive and innovative in its practices.

Of course many, many elementary schools are like this, because they can be. But the elementary here was headed from its beginning, and then for 39 years, by a woman who was plucked out of the lab school culture of Greater Chicago in 1922. Her mark on this place is indelible. And so I think he would like all of that. And I think he would like the other major thing that I like here, which is the fact that this whole campus and the resources here, the other institutions that we are a part of, create this opportunity for learning for children and partnership that is just unparalleled. The potential here has been tapped in some ways, and in other ways, it hasn’t. And that was really why I came.

Jeff: The closest comparative models, I think, are schools that are part of universities like Falk. And so that prepared me well for being here.

Picture an independent school that operates almost like a living laboratory for education – it’s where theory meets practice in the most dynamic way possible – that is a university-affiliated lab school. I often compare it to a teaching hospital – but for education – where future teachers learn their craft in a real classroom setting with actual students, not just theoretical scenarios, and experiment with new educational materials, curriculum designs and pedagogical methods. In working with local colleges and universities, Wheeling Country Day School had been an informal lab. It allows me to understand what draws Jeff to such profound potential. There’s this incredible multiplier effect happening on your campus. Every innovative technique you develop, every breakthrough moment, every creative way you make learning come alive – it doesn’t just impact the children in your classrooms, it ripples out in ways you will never fully appreciate through the college students and guests that grace your campus as well.  

Jeff: I came to Cranbrook because I could see so many tremendous, open opportunities for innovation and growth. I had so loved being at the lab school, and I loved the opportunity there to collaborate with other units of the University. So we’d be working on NSF grants with the School of Engineering that involved showing a commitment to translating the research into activities for the K-12 space. So we would get written into those and then they would do it. And those were fabulous. Or just working with School of Ed colleagues on new pedagogies and practices.

Liz: For K-12 and Higher Ed to consider because you’re where the rubber hits the road. 

Jeff: Correct.

Cranbrook is different, wonderfully so. While there is no university affiliation, Cranbrook boasts a history museum, a planetarium, an observatory, a contemporary art museum, architecturally significant historic homes, outdoor sculptures and one of the oldest Japanese gardens in the US, with fountains, lakes, trails, and more. Indeed, it is an

Jeff: …amalgam of school spaces and nonschool spaces, but all of them are educative spaces, and all of them are, with some form of intent, built to elicit reaction.

This might be the only place in the world that I would choose to work, except for Falk. And so when approached about it as a possibility, even though I wasn’t looking for a job, I explored it, and there were aspects of it that were just so enticing. And I thought, the things I am engaging in here at the University of Pittsburgh could be done on steroids here, and with more ready partners in some ways, or rather with some more obvious partners, like an art museum, an institute of science that has a planetarium, and natural history specimens and a T-Rex and whatever else not.

What if the walls of a classroom could expand to embrace a larger community? This is the vision we had at  Wheeling Country Day School which Jim Denova captured when he described it as “a constellation of learning spaces.” No longer confined to its original two-acre campus in Wheeling’s Woodsdale neighborhood, the school bloomed across the city—taking root on the branch campus of West Virginia Northern Community College and flourishing within the green spaces of a municipal park managed by the Wheeling Park Commission.

This expansion wasn’t about real estate; it was about reimagining where authentic learning happens. The seeds of this thinking were planted years earlier during a tour of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh with its Executive Director, Jane Werner. As a line of preschoolers wandered past us, I remarked on what seemed like a perfectly timed field trip. Jane’s response stopped me in my tracks: “They go to school here.” What?!? How had I not given my daughters such a rare opportunity? An idea was born. 

Place influences culture. Context matters. Place-based learning doesn’t just expose children to new people and ideas—it dissolves the artificial boundaries between school and life, transforming every corner of a community into a potential classroom. When learning spills into museums, parks, colleges, and downtown spaces, students discover that education isn’t something that happens in isolation, but something they actively participate in as members of a learning community. Their larger neighborhood becomes their school. Just as Mister Rogers suggested.

Cranbrook has all of this available within the 319 acres that it calls home, but such access sometimes becomes a logistical dilemma.

Liz: The students actually shuttle between the campuses?

Jeff: They do, yeah, the Upper Schoolers, that is. There’s 15 minutes of passing time between their classes, which is a lot. It cuts into the day a lot. So we’re looking at the daily schedule now to create longer blocks of instruction, which I would like anyway, but it will also minimize those disruptions.

Liz: Isn’t it nice when logistics are the Trojan horse to get something programmatic?

Jeff: That’s right.  It can prove challenging to get people to think critically and differently about the “boring” logistics when they are so deeply devoted, oftentimes quite rightly, to the perceived way that things have “always” been done. And always done well. This has been true, in some way or another, everywhere I’ve been, at every school where I’ve worked.

Liz: Is that a fear of change?

Jeff: Yes, I think it is. We humans seem, more often than not, to prefer continuity over change. It’s safe and it’s comforting. All of us love the rituals and the traditions that make our lives meaningful. But tradition can sometimes be a tricky concept to navigate. I have found for some it can mean “back off.” This is a tradition. So please look elsewhere in your quest to evolve things or contemporize them. We all run the risk of declaring rudimentary things, say, like daily schedules, to be traditions. And so for a long time now I’ve been on an educative journey to remind the people with whom I have worked that some things are just not sacred enough to be considered traditions; they’re practices. And practices should be continually interrogated and reinterpreted for contemporary use, while true traditions are to be celebrated and jealously guarded.

Liz: Practice in and of itself is a word that is a journey. 

Jeff: Correct. 

Liz: You’re getting better at something.

Jeff: Yes. And it’s unfinished, right? Because it’s a practice. And so people stare at me quizzically sometimes when I say this. And then they might go right back to like: oh, no, but having lunch at noon is a tradition. No, it’s not. It’s just a practice. But having mid-year exams is a tradition. Again no, it’s just  practice. And step by step we’re getting somewhere with all of that.

The uniqueness of this place, the unicorn nature of it, is a significant part of its incredible charm, but it’s not helpful in every circumstance or situation. We sometimes can’t seem to identify any benchmarks because no one is quite like us. Why would we look to see what other people and places are doing, for instance, with admissions? Or with advancement? We do our own thing. Because there’s clearly no local peer, right?

Liz: Right.

Jeff: Then when people think about it, there’s just no peer anywhere so all the more reason for us  to interrogate our practice.

Liz: Michael Fullen says it takes 5-7 years for a change in education. It’s true.

Jeff: It is.

Liz: Which scares me because so many of our heads are 5-7 year heads. It is very interesting. 

Jeff: So true. And I think that one of the things that’s inevitable in those transitions, well, maybe not inevitable, but often part of them, is when whatever committee, board, group is creating the plan for finding a new head, whatever that happens to be, they end up prioritizing things that are the opposite of the things that the person brought to the table because they’re so focused on finding “fresh.” So if the last person was a very business-minded person, now we need a kid person. And if they were a kid person, now we need somebody with business and admissions and advancement acumen. Really, though, all of us have to be all of it. I think that that’s a tricky transition for institutions. I think sometimes it’s the thing that leads to these unlaunched tenures. 

Liz: In other words, there is a problem of governance in our industry?

Jeff: I suppose there is, yes. And there’s the problem of the rapidity of change and the challenges that schools have faced, I would say since the financial meltdown of 2008, and the reworking that came with it of what people thought about their discretionary income, that the stakes are now so high for so many of our schools. I mean, this is something you learn through accreditation, right? When you go on teams and the school says, well, our hope is that we’re going to increase enrollment next year by 25%. That’s how we’re going to deal with our budget deficit. But hope isn’t a strategy. You can’t hope for something. But I think that boards sometimes do that. When I took on my first headship in Minnesota years ago now, the board in my initial contract tried to write into it that I would have a bonus only if I did X, Y, and Z. And I said, “No. I want you to give me that bonus if I spend five successful years here and you haven’t fired me. Then you should give me the bonus. I don’t know now that I can do these things. I don’t know this market. I don’t even know if they’re rational asks.”

Jeff might be talking about a governance concern, but he’s manifesting a bigger issue about the context necessary to make decisions, especially in the company of strangers. And make no mistake—despite shared mission statements and common purpose, board members and heads often remain strangers to one another in the ways that matter most for decision-making.

Malcolm Gladwell’s exploration in Talking to Strangers reveals just how poorly we actually understand people we don’t know well, even when we think we do. We fall victim to what he calls the “transparency illusion” – the dangerous assumption that we can easily read others’ intentions, motivations, and character. Without asking good questions and being explicit, we assume meaning and intent.  As another walker told me, “I might be thinking of a doberman while you conjure a chihuahua – very different animals although we are both thinking of dogs.”

Gladwell’s concept of “coupling” – how behavior is inextricably linked to context – becomes particularly relevant here. A goal, achievable in another city or even in a different school across the same town, might be impossible based on context. Place matters. Keeping Gladwell’s theories in mind, how are boards and heads who are just getting to know each other best able to navigate decisions?

The industry warns that we don’t want a board of parents or friends—that creates different problems of proximity and blind spots. But if effective governance requires strangers to make complex decisions together about institutions they care deeply about, how do boards and heads create the conditions for understanding each other well enough to disagree productively and decide wisely?

 In my history, a friend becoming board chair 

Liz: …was the best thing that ever happened to Country Day. 

Jeff: Oh, I bet. 

Liz: He was able to call me on things, but he also was able to hold the board back to say, “No, we’re going to let her try this thing.”

Jeff: Well, and look what happened. You tried some pretty impactful and out-of-the-box things….

You sold a progressive, expansive way of thinking about children and school to people who would not normally be predisposed to like it, but in ways that made it meaningful to them, because education should be meaningful to everybody. 

For me, everybody is the key element in that last sentence. I knew an independent school could pilot new theories and incubate fresh ideas, but I wanted it to serve more students directly than just those who walked through our doors.

Take Cranbrook’s HUB (Horizons Upward Bound) program, which serves the greater Detroit community. Through a 6-week summer residential component and Saturday academic series, this program prepares students with limited opportunities from the Detroit metropolitan area to succeed in post-secondary education. The program doesn’t just help those students – it enriches the entire school and transforms faculty lives too.

WCDS created something similar with the Edge program. We leveraged technology to transform our on-campus tutoring center into a virtual reading solution for afterschool programs like Boys & Girls Clubs – at no cost to the families served. That program reached far more people than just the children being tutored directly.

Liz: I was thinking earlier when you were talking about HUB, that that’s your Edge for Boys & Girls Clubs. I really think independent education needs that thing that is for public purpose.

Jeff: 100%. And I think a lot of us have thought that for a long time because it was something that I think I remember Pat Bassett popularizing eons ago. But I really think that that’s valuable. 

We agree, it actually helps all of us with trying to change the perception of our schools as just, oh, fancy rich enclaves. When that’s often simply not what they are.

Jeff: Because one of the things that drew me to Cranbrook along with the uniqueness of the universe and the collaborating units, was that Cranbrook as a whole, not just the schools, is a major cultural force – or can be – in this region. And as this region reimagines itself, which is really what is happening right now, we should be a main partner in that. We should be helping the greater region to achieve that goal because we can be a place that is a draw for people, that is an example of what life can be like if you relocate to Greater Detroit. Not just if your kids go to school here, but all these things that you can do here. This is a publicly-facing place. 

I love this idea of a school as a leader in a community. In my mind, the heart of a neighborhood is the education of its children—the very future of each community. This isn’t just educational rhetoric; it’s the lived philosophy that Fred Rogers understood intuitively and shared freely.

When Mister Rogers invited us into his neighborhood each day, he wasn’t just creating children’s television—he was modeling what happens when a community organizes itself around the care and development of its youngest members. His neighborhood worked because everyone had a role in nurturing children: King Friday, Mr. and Mrs. McFeely, Lady Aberlin, and many more. The neighborhood thrived because children’s growth and learning weren’t relegated to one building or one set of adults, but was a shared responsibility that connected everyone.

Schools have the unique opportunity—perhaps the obligation—to be the Mister Rogers of their communities, the convening force that reminds neighborhoods of the purpose of their existence. When a school sees itself as community leader rather than community service provider, it transforms from an institution where children must attend into a living demonstration of how learning happens everywhere, all the time.

Our schools are perhaps the only institutions with both the reach and the missions to ask the essential Mister Rogers question of their neighborhoods: How can we love these children well together? 

If we could get that sorted out, so much else would fall away. I got the sense as I walked the Cranbrook campus that Jeff Suzik was in the right place, asking the right questions to find such an answer.

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