One of the most interesting questions to me is, “What’s next?”

We’ve spent the last two weeks traveling across the country, entering into difficult conversations with courageous individuals. People who took the time to stop by our public studios and share a story with us. 

If you’re not familiar with the process, we ask a question, people write a response of 25 words or less, and we make a black and white portrait of them. In a day, we can do 40 or 50 portraits or sometimes even more. We combine the portraits with the quotes and together we create a body of work that helps celebrate and amplify the beauty and wisdom that’s already in the room.

July was full. We spent time in northern Minnesota gathering stories of addiction and recovery and asked, “When did you believe recovery was possible for you?”

In Havre, Montana we set up at the Great Northern Fair to explore mental health and asked, “When have you found unexpected courage?” 

And in Phoenix, we partnered with Prevent Child Abuse Arizona at their annual conference of more than 900 practitioners and asked, “What has called you to this work?”

We’ve found that when you show up to listen, people will share powerful stories. They spend time crafting their response. They make themselves vulnerable. More often than not, they explain their willingness to share with some version of this statement: “If this can help one person, it’s worth it.”

We’ve all been wounded in some way in our lives. We’ve all made mistakes. And it’s easy to get lost in that. The stories that move me the most are the ones that ask, “What’s next?”

There’s a through line that connects all these stories. Addiction and recovery, mental health, suicide prevention, child abuse prevention. They can be woven together and they can compound one another.

But… And….

No matter how hard things are, it’s not the end of the story. There is hope. No matter what has happened in the past, there is a path forward. Whatever you’ve learned, pay it forward. You never know who might need it.

Below you’ll find some samples of the series we did in Northern Minnesota. (stories from Havre and the conference coming soon.) There are a lot of paths to recovery. Rarely is shame one of them. Encouragement is. Support is. Patience is. Persistence is. 

Most things are more expensive to fix once they are broken. It’s important that we look upstream, to ask what leads to all these challenges so we can learn how to prevent them in the first place.

And then, when we do fall down, it’s important to get back up and ask, “What’s next?”