Connection, Grace and the Weight We Carry

Connection is at the center of so much of what I do and how I think. A former manager once wrote in a performance appraisal that I "feel engineering and leadership." I hope to live up to that statement.

Connection begins with family, friends, and neighbors, but it extends into every corner of life. I value connecting with colleagues, with customers, and with peers in the industry. Connection is not just about relationships; it is about presence, patience, and grace. This year has tested my ability to hold on to those things, and it has shown me how essential grace can be.

My mother passed away on Wednesday, January 15th, 2025. I won't go into the details other than to say that eulogizing one of your parents feels both cathartic and traumatic at the same time. Since then, a part of me has been operating on autopilot. If my engine usually runs as a V8, I suspect I have been running as a V7.2 since January. With as much certainty as statistics allow, I know I have not been firing on all cylinders.

Work, parenting, and, to quote a colleague, "the world spinning off its axis," have blocked much of my emotional processing. My daily environment even carries symbolic weight. Many of my mother's belongings sit in my basement. I spend most of my workday in my home office, which is really just a corner, with my back to "mom." It is a physical reminder of how grief stays present even when I try not to face it directly.

Her birthday was October 6th. Mine is October 15th. We were separated by almost exactly 30 years to the day. The closeness of our birthdays punctuated our own closeness. When I was younger, my mom paved the way for "birthday season," and naturally, I acted like a self-centered little demon who saw her birthday as a signal to my own. As I slowly matured from adolescence into young adulthood, our birthdays evolved into a shared gateway to the fall. It became a loose, unspoken family ritual, and while I love all seasons, fall has always held just a slight edge. Perhaps it is subconsciously because I loved our "gateway birthdays," or maybe it is because I have spent a significant portion of my life in New England, where fall is simply magnificent.

My mother's birthday is almost a week away, and today it occurred to me that mine is just a short time after. I have been fixated on October 6th. The approach of that date feels daunting. We careen forward toward days as time pushes us ahead with no other agenda than to keep moving to the beat of a cosmic drummer. Yet this particular day feels like an anti-holiday, the day we do not want to arrive. It carries the anxiety, anticipation, and flat-out horror of loss. I feel pangs of remorse for the things we wanted to continue that cannot. We had plans that will never come to fruition, conversations we never completed, and in my mother's case, stories left unfinished. She was an avid reader.

The weight of what is unfinished is real, but it sits alongside what is complete. Amidst the sadness, I hold many positive memories. When she passed away, I often reminded myself to feel thankful for having shared almost half a century with her. Many people never experience that much time. Fifty years of memories with a loved one create a powerful context. It is a repository so vast that it shapes who we are.

I am not writing about this to collect grace or sympathy. I am writing to share my own experience with others who navigate invisible obstacles every day. Grief taught me that what looks ordinary on the surface can hide an unseen struggle. Whether it means finding patience in the maelstrom of supermarket aisles on weekend mornings, enduring the grind of urban commutes, or showing up to work with a veneer of emotional disconnection, everyone carries something. I am reminded of David Foster Wallace's "This is Water".

Operating with grace for others can be challenging. We have to ask more questions. As Stephen Covey suggests, "Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood." Not all disabilities, frustrations, or obstacles are immediately clear. They do not have to be chronic conditions such as diabetes, mental health challenges, or neurodivergence. They do not have to be extended challenges such as the death of a loved one, a medical calamity, or social unrest. Sometimes they take the form of something as immediate as a flat tire on the way to work or burnt coffee in the morning. Our culture has become so combative that we often fail to extend to each other the common decency of experiencing disappointment.

In a workplace conversation about challenges, a co-worker offered advice that applies as much to life as it does to work: "... so long as we are self-reflective, fair, and consistent, I feel we will keep moving in the right direction."

Reflection begins with us. It's not only a pause but a deliberate act of turning inward. It helps us prepare for upcoming conversations and interactions by giving us space to recognize our emotions before they take the wheel. It also allows us to revisit the moments we have just experienced, with enough distance to recognize what actually happened rather than what we wished had happened. Reflection asks us to notice the gap between intention and impact. How can we show up effectively, given our current state of mind? Given the time of day? How did we actually show up? The practice of reflection gives us the opportunity to learn in near real-time, to identify patterns in our behavior, and to decide how we want to move forward.

Fairness matters. Practicing fairness is more challenging than it initially seems because it requires us to confront our own biases. Removing bias entirely is as tricky as removing all sugar from our diet: even when we think it's gone, it sneaks in through unexpected places. The challenge isn't to pretend that bias doesn't exist, but to become aware of its presence and how it affects our decisions. Fairness begins with awareness, and awareness begins with honesty. When we acknowledge that our perspective is limited, we create the space to hear others more fully. Fairness isn't about perfection; it is about the effort to treat others with the dignity we hope they will extend to us.

Consistency requires discipline. It is where reflection and practice intersect and are put into practice. It is one thing to reflect occasionally or to aim for fairness when it feels convenient. It is another to do it over and over until it becomes the standard for how we show up. However, consistency isn't about developing rigidity from rote practice. It is about dependability. It means that the people around us can trust that we will show up with steadiness, not unpredictability. It requires discipline because life doesn't stop testing us. Each day brings new circumstances that challenge our patience, our fairness, and our resilience. Consistency demans that we practice reflection and awareness until they become habits. Each time we show up, we can do so a little better than before, and over time those small steps compound into trust.

Moving in the right direction does not always mean moving in a straight line. Reflection, fairness, and consistency provide a compass, but they don't guarantee perfect execution. Humans are emotional and imperfect. We make mistakes. We sometimes make the wrong choices, even when we know the right ones sit in front of us. Grace affords us the ability to persevere. It empowers us to learn without shame, to adjust without quitting, and to keep showing up when earlier attempts didn't go as we'd hoped. There are times when we take ten steps off the path that seem to leave us lost in the woods, only to find ourselves making an improbable leap forward further down the path than we had expected.

Through it all, the thread is grace. Grace for ourselves when we are not running at full capacity. Grace for others when they, too, are navigating invisible burdens. Grace when progress feels messy and nonlinear. The loss of my mother has shown me that grief does not disappear. It lingers and reminds me that I cannot always perform at my best. Yet even when the engine runs at V7.2 instead of V8, I can still move forward. Grace is what allows that movement, what carries us forward despite imperfection, and what binds us to each other when the path is uneven.