Estrella

Julie was the best of us. She was goodness wrapped up inside of a person – the Beth March of our little family of friends. And like the wind, she was here for 26 years and then gone too soon. There is a stigma around depression and suicide, but it is a true disease. As I entered into my first real grieving period of my life, I learned how to grieve someone from a disease that I couldn’t quite make sense of or really even pinpoint. It is said that we only understand ten percent of the brain’s activity but use all of its function during our lives. Well, if Julie was using 100% of her brain to live, she used 150% of her soul to love others more than loving life and herself. One year later, and I’ve only begun to start the five-year period of grief. But the loss of Julie has taught me so much about life, especially life living in pain and with depression. Three Little Lessons Julie would often ask her class of first graders, “Is it a big thing or a little thing?” when referring to th...

Watching the Tony Awards last night, my heart sank when Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 only snagged a couple of the awards of the ten or so categories for which it was nominated. I just knew Josh Groban was going to win for best actor in a musical, but behold - Ben Platt and the cast of Dear Evan Hansen won the night! I remember exiting the Imperial Theater on a cold March night in New York earlier this year, full of soaring energy after watching the cast of The Great Comet. Yet, over the bustle of taxis and exiting theater-goers, I heard roars from the crowd down the street, who were waiting for the main star (a.k.a. Ben Platt) of a musical I didn't know. I had never heard of Dear Evan Hansen before that March night, so I looked it up on the bus back to DC, seeing it was about teen anxiety, suicide & depression and finding where one belongs in a community. I remembered the musical of my era about youth struggles - Spring Awakening. It covered the range of ...