Thanks for coming back to In Pursuit of Quality. If you're in the U.S., I hope the holiday weekend treated you well no matter how you chose to celebrate.
In the future I promise to lighten up, but this one is serious and important.
And it's for the kids!
Grief Sucks.
We're bad at talking about grief. It's dark, unpleasant, and something most of us want to avoid all together. Yet we can't. Grief is something that affects us all, even if it's hard to understand what that means until you've actually experienced it.
My personal journey with grief guides why I write about the pursuit of quality. A major part of finding subjective quality is due to the fact that every life eventually ends. There's no grieving without having someone to love. And if love's not part of the quality calculus, then I don't know what it is.
I loved my dad. He wasn't the best parent, but he was always a good friend. When I lost him suddenly to a gory, unsolved mystery—he died from a blow to the head—my world was turned upside down in a way that can only be described as primal and animalistic. "Overcome by grief" took on a new meaning.
It also got my wheels turning. I was in my late 30s when I got that horrifying news, and one of my first racing thoughts was: at least I'm an adult dealing with this, not a kid. My childhood was hard enough. A loss like that, in that way, would have sent me down a dark path. That thought kept coming back to me—I'm not a child.
Experience Camps.
In the U.S. just about 6 million children will experience the death of a parent or sibling by the time they're 18. That's one out of every twelve kids. Childhood grief is associated with lots of developmental disruptions including substance abuse, depression, suicide, and poverty. This really breaks my heart.
It's one of the main reasons why, for the past 4 years, I've sat on the board of Experience Camps for Grieving Children. Experience Camps is a no-cost program for grieving kids. Our one-week, overnight summer camps paired with year-round programming help to reframe the experience of grief and empower kids to develop skills that help them move forward with their lives. These are experiences that change their lives forever, helping them to embody a life full of hope and possibility.
I hope you can feel the pride of my board involvement spilling from the page. Helping to provide a higher quality of life for grieving children results in better quality outcomes for me—and for us all.
I'm thinking about this now because, sadly, demand for what we do at Experience Camps is outstripping supply. In 2024, we'll expand the number of kids who attend our programs by 20%. So, I'm using this space to ratchet up support. In my mind, there is no better pursuit of quality than that.
Together, we need to raise $500K to fund our camper expansion next summer, changing the lives of even more children. I set up a fundraising page to help get us to that goal. And by the time you read this, I'll contribute $2500 in the pursuit of quality—that's the cost to provide one kid a full year of programming including the week of camp, reunions, and other year round support.
So please share this. It's not about getting more people to read my thought letter. Truly, I don't care about that. I care about these children, and I care about giving everyone a chance to live a quality life no matter how they define it. If you care, too, please consider making a contribution of your own.
A Gift?
Today, I have come to see grief as a gift. Sounds crazy, but managing through it shapes our personal and professional stories.
I wouldn't be who I am without the haunting loss of my dad. I wouldn't be on the board of Experience Camps. I wouldn't have started on this journey toward a pursuit of quality.
And I wouldn't be so certain that what matters in the end are better human outcomes, not more stuff.
With warmth, respect, and gratitude.