A Million Dreams

Every night I lie in bed.  The brightest colors fill my head.  A million dreams are keeping me awake.  I think of what the world could be.  A vision of the one I see.  A million dreams is all it's gonna take (A million dreams for the world we're gonna make) ~The Greatest Showman Soundtrack.

In the 2017 musical The Greatest Showman, there is a song early on called "A Million Dreams."  The song begins with a child singing about the world he imagines, a better one, more beautiful than the one around him.  Then, almost without noticing, the child grows up, the voice changes, the years pass.  But the dream continues.  The grown man is still singing about the same world he imagined as a boy.

I have thought about that song a lot recently, because in some ways, Someone To Tell It To began with a million dreams too.  I think those dreams started long before the organization ever had a name.

When I was in middle school, I remember sitting beside the bed of a bedridden elderly woman.  She rarely had visitors.  I was fortunate to be invited in as one of the few listeners she could "tell it to."  I may not have had language for it then, but something about those interactions stayed with me.  She had a lifetime of stories, joys, losses, and wisdom to impart, and I am forever grateful to have been one of the few to hear them.   I might not have known it then, yet I think that is where the earliest seeds of this work were planted.

In this post, I'm not going to focus on the many accomplishments of Someone To Tell It To—the recognition in Psychology Today, the books we have published, the newspaper and magazine stories, the nationally and internationally recognized publications and podcasts, the awards, or the more than 1,000 people we have trained to listen.  Those things matter, and I am incredibly proud of them.  Yet, I have come to believe they won't be the best way to measure what this work has meant; the real measure is found in the conversations no one else saw.  The person who finally told the truth.  The person who felt less alone.  The listener who learned to stay instead of fix.  The relationship that became a little more honest because someone was willing to listen.  Those are the things I will carry with me.

When people ask how Someone To Tell It To started, I usually tell them it began as a personal need, not as an organization.  It grew out of my own story, of growing up carrying things that were hard to talk about, and not always having someone I felt safe enough to open up to.  I think a lot of us know that feeling: things are going on inside us, but we don't have the words, we worry others won't understand, or we don't want to be a burden.  So we keep it in.  And over time, we start to realize just how heavy that becomes.

Despite those feelings, I also had moments when someone did listen to me—not to fix me, not to hurry me toward a lesson, but simply to stay.  Those moments changed me.  I never forgot what it felt like to be heard.

So when we started this work, the idea was simple: everyone deserves someone to tell it to.  Someone who wouldn't judge, interrupt, or rush to fix what may not be fixable.  Someone who could sit with another person in the middle of their story and say, and embody: I'm here. You don't have to carry this alone.

We had no idea when we started how many people were walking around carrying stories they had never told anyone.  Over the years we heard grief and trauma, loneliness and disappointment, questions of identity and purpose, broken relationships and unspoken fears.  And again and again, we learned something fundamental: more times than not, people don't need someone to solve their problems, they need someone to hear their story.

That became especially meaningful when it came to men.  So many men are taught, explicitly or subtly, to hold things in—to be strong, to push through, to not talk about what's happening underneath.  I have watched what happens when a man finally has a place to tell the truth about what he is carrying, and discovers the person across from him will not walk away.  Being heard may not change the circumstances, but it can change the experience of facing them alone.  And that can change a life.

Over these fifteen years, I have watched this little dream grow far beyond anything we imagined at the start.  And somewhere along the way, it stopped being something I was simply doing and became part of the way I saw the world.  I began noticing the lonely or quiet person in the room;  the person everyone else had already decided they understood; the person who needed someone to slow down long enough to hear what was underneath the words.

I myself was once terrified of public speaking, being vulnerable in front of others, even of being in a crowded room.  The irony was not lost on me that I eventually found myself standing on stages in front of hundreds of people, giving keynotes and leading workshops about the importance of listening.  Perhaps that was part of the gift of this work, too, listening helped me find my own voice.  I learned that finding your voice doesn't mean the fear goes away.  Sometimes it simply means you discover something important enough to say despite the fear, and feel worthy enough to belong in the room.

There is a tagline we have used from the beginning: everyone has a story worth telling and worth listening to.  I believe that more deeply now than ever.  Beneath all our differences, we want to matter.  We want to be known.  We want to know that our story means something to someone else.

That is why I believe Someone To Tell It To was never really about an organization.  It was always about people—about the belief that listening can change the way we experience one another.  I have come to see this work less like something we built and more like something we were entrusted with for a season.  I carried it for fifteen years.  I gave it my voice, my energy, my mistakes, my best ideas, and a whole lot of my heart.  Now I get to trust others to carry it forward.  That is the hardest and most beautiful part of leaving something you have spent fifteen years building: you have to believe the dream is bigger than the person who first dreamed it.  

I do.

Listening is not just something I have taught—it has become part of who I am.  It has changed how I lead, how I parent, how I love, how I understand my own story.  So I am not leaving the dream behind.  I am carrying it with me.

When I think back to that boy sitting beside an elderly woman's bed, I wonder what he would think if he could see where those early dreams led.  I think he might be amazed.  And maybe he would understand something I didn't back then: sometimes a dream isn't given to you to accomplish alone.  Sometimes you are given a dream so you can begin it—and then you invite others in, and they carry it, and shape it, and add their own stories to it, until it becomes something bigger than the person who first imagined it.

Someone To Tell It To will continue.  The people, programs, relationships, and vision that have grown over these years are not ending because I am stepping away.  There are people who will carry the work forward, listen to new stories, reach new people, and find new ways to remind the world that everyone matters, everyone deserves to be heard, and no one should have to feel alone.  I may not know exactly what the next chapter looks like; I do know the story will continue.

One of Someone To Tell It To’s long-standing friends and supporters recently wrote a hand-written letter where he said: “When two friends have an idea about filling a societal need, work together to make a concept flower and bloom into a working model that addresses that need, it is a real miracle.”

I hope others remember what it felt like to be heard.  I hope they remember what it felt like to have someone stay.  And I hope they pass that feeling on.

The song from The Greatest Showman ends with the same voice that opened it—older now, still singing the dream that began in childhood.  It didn't disappear when he grew up.  It grew with him.  I think that happened to me, too.

The boy who sat beside that woman's bed is still here: still believing that people matter, still believing that no one should have to carry their story alone, still believing that sometimes the most important thing we can give another person is our full attention.

The organization may have been something I helped build.  The work may have been something I gave fifteen years of my life to.  But the dream was always bigger than me.  So I am not saying goodbye.  I am carrying it with me.  And somewhere, I hope, someone else is carrying it, too.

Because everyone still has a story worth telling.  And everyone still has a story worth listening to.

The dream continues.