A significant moment

My daughter came home one day with a research topic that wasn't just a headline to her, it was a person.

Alphonso James spent 32 years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, and she knew him. He'd become a dear family friend, so when she and her friend Sol chose wrongful conviction as their research subject, they weren't working with abstract data. They were working with someone they knew.

They interviewed Alphonso, studied the ​Innocence Network​, and did the kind of research that actually means something because the stakes were real. But research is still just data until it meets a human being, and last month, it finally did.

With the support of their teacher Ms. O'Callaghan, who held incredible space for these kids throughout the whole process, we put together a panel. I got to moderate. Alphonso was joined by Jeff Ragavin, a producer, filmmaker and host of Bounty Uncharted series who had already told Alphonso's story on film ​(watch it here)​, and Sam Shapiro, a civil rights attorney who gave the legal context to everything they'd been researching. The students watched, listened, and then asked questions that were as sharp as they were soulful.

But the moment I keep coming back to happened outside, not on stage.

After the panel, Alphonso and I grabbed breakfast at a nearby diner. Walking out, we ran into a group of boys from the class on their lunch break. When they saw Alphonso, they didn't wave and keep moving. They stopped. They told him what his words meant to them. Fist bumps, hugs, the whole thing.

Watching those young men show up for a man who had every reason to be closed off, and seeing him receive it so openly, I was reminded of why we tell our stories at all.

Your story is never insignificant. Whatever you're carrying, someone needs to hear it.