This story is about a the first moment I learned the power of saying hello and goodbye to another person. This universal human experience occurs over and over in our lives between friends, parents/children and potential life mates. Her name was Elizabeth and she was my first real love and the person whom I was sure I was going to spend the rest of my life. In the end we needed to say goodbye but I am forever thankful the ways she made my life better in this world.

Through a series of conversations about death and dying my college roommate taught me some of the best lessons of life. His name was Greg and he was just one of those people who seemed to know that his time on this earth was limited and getting the most out of it as quickly as one could was important. We talked about our faith and what we thought might happen after it was over BUT mostly we just had some of the most soul giving conversations as friends. WARNING: This story obviously deals with grief and the struggle to understand the deep and often painful whys of suffering in this world. You may cry or relive some of your own difficult and disorienting moments. Listen with caution but my hope is this story of my conversations with Greg are more about the hope that can happen between friends when being OK in this world is not always possible.

This is a story about my family's secret and its impact upon my life as a storyteller. My grandparents kept secrets on the farm as an act of pure love. One family secret nearly destroyed our family and was the reason I was raised in town (Ottumwa Iowa) rather than on the family farm. Through some humor and childhood adventures I attempt to share a word of hope that arose from one of the most difficult moments in in my mothers life.