Everyone has a story. 

My eight-year-old daughter was happily splashing in the community pool last Friday in her weekly swim class when a fellow mom sat next to me.  She was Korean and we started talking about nothing really.  We touched on parenting challenges when she disclosed that she was adopted.  Her adoptive parents were from Idaho; they had a birth son and then adopted her.  Shortly after integrating into their family, her adoptive father died.  For whatever reason, her adoptive mom and her did not get along.  She ended up being sent to a boarding school.  It was a painful time.

And it is still painful.  As an adult, now with two kids of her own, she wondered why her relationship with her mom did not work.  And why her birth mother might have given her away.  To complicate matters, she had a friend who recently found her birth mother back in Korea and finally knew why she was given away.  The woman I met desperately want that closure, too.  Why was she left on the street corner as a baby?  Where did she “really” come from?  Did her personality resemble her birth mother at all?

How about the arborist that grinds tree stumps all day but really moved to Portland for the art?

Or the father dealing with his three-year old’s bout of cancer.  Not quite understanding why a three year gets cancer but having a new appreciation for the health of his family.

Or the student saddled with student debt but excited about her new job that required her to leave her hometown for the first time and truly experience being an adult.

Or the Uber driver, James, I met recently.  He’s lived in the Pacific Northwest for the last 47 years and recently became an Uber driver so that he had something to do while his wife hiked with her weekly Tuesday hike group of women-friends.  He just wanted a little spending money and to meet interesting people and hear their stories.

Some stories are shocking.  Some are interesting.  Most are very personal.

Oh yes, everyone has a story.  You just need to stop and listen.