I like to consider myself a helper, but when our son, Jon, took his life on Easter weekend of 2019, I could no longer think of myself as a successful helper. In my own eyes, I instantly became a failed one.

Personal transformation is usually an experience we actively seek out—not one that hunts us down. In the twenty-first century, becoming a caregiver is a transformation that comes at us, requiring us to rethink everything we once knew. When a loved one becomes a caregiver, everything changes...

I wonder how we got so accustomed, as human beings, to being separated from the earth. How we can live surrounded by concrete, work in buildings with pumped in air, and practice habits of buying food wrapped in plastic from the grocery store, with little thought to how our lifestyles affect the living earth, which provides for us all of life.

Joseph is always telling me that we are all connected. “What comes around, goes around,” he says, explaining how the medicine wheel works. Sometimes listening to him gets my head spinning in circles, but that is how it is when you are learning new ways of thinking and new ways of being.

As a rising star in the field of abstract mathematics, Michael discovered that he could see beauty and pattern where others could not. But his path was not to be inside academia, or even inside society. He went on a grand adventure to unify his Buddhism with his ability to see an expanded view of reality. He created beauty in a place where nobody else would, and made his friends amongst dolphins.