Kristen Ziman

Most crises aren't accidents.

The most expensive meetings in any organization are the ones where everyone already knows the answer, and nobody says it.

That's not a communication problem. That's a culture of avoidance that got normalized.

At some point, someone saw it first. And chose silence. And then so did the next person. And the next.

That's how crises get built. Quietly. Collectively. On purpose.

On Mother's Day, I reached out to two women who weren't my mother but loved me like they were.

One of them wrote back and said something that stopped me cold: "I still have trouble wrapping my head around how much my matter of fact welcoming meant to you."

Matter of fact. To her, taking in another kid — on top of four of her own — was just what you did. To me, it was everything.

This week I wrote about the gap between those two realities. And about the question I think we all need to ask ourselves:

Are you the house people run to — or the house that sends them away?

Read it and subscribe here: https://loom.ly/z5haz94

If it resonates, share it. Someone in your feed needs to read this today.

A cop said two words to my friend Karie during roll call. She signed up for an event she was terrified to attend, alone, in a city where she knew no one.

That decision led her to leave policing, cross an ocean, and build a life in Scotland with four daughters she wouldn't have otherwise. All of it.

From two words.

I've been thinking about what that means for the rest of us — and about the moment in a champagne cellar in France where someone did the same thing for me.

New post is up. https://loom.ly/E_K8FPI