Journey Into the Unknown | Chapter 3: Righteous Gemstones | August 2025
This past month, I spent time in two very different but equally profound places: helping my oldest friend prepare his dad’s house for an estate sale, and traveling to Santa Fe for a long weekend with my brother—the first 1-1 we’ve shared in nineteen years.
On the surface, these trips couldn’t be more different. One was heavy, made light with memory, dust, and the weight of sorting through 30 years of photographs and furniture. The other was light, heavy and spacious, filled with laughter, music, eating tacos and drinking tequila.
Together, they offered a lesson I’ve been turning over like a stone in my hand since my journey: that relationships and people, like gemstones, have both rough and smooth edges. Like with our parents, our partners, our friends, our children, and our siblings–we sharpen each other with each other. We need each other.
When I helped my friend sift through his father’s home, the rough edges were everywhere—grief caught unexpectedly, decisions made, the vulnerability of being needed. Yet in that roughness, the beauty of friendship: the steady presence that helps carry a load too heavy for one person.
With my brother in Santa Fe, the smoothness was more apparent—we walked through the joy of art markets, museums, and food, hiking up the desert mountain, and the simple comfort of brotherhood renewed. But even there, beneath the blue skies, were reminders of our sharp corners: our mother’s Alzheimer’s, the different paths we’ve taken, the future of this country.
Both visits reminded me that none of us is polished on our own. My in-laws with their rough edges; my parents with theirs; our kids with short tempers; etc.–we need our partners, our “other half.”
We need each other to help smooth out the jaggedness of life. Sometimes that comes through showing up in moments of grief, through celebrating time away, and often through the long, ordinary work of simply being present–over a lifetime of memories.
At Gather, we often talk about leadership and community as an act of gathering—being there, of helping one another grow into our truest selves. I’m reminded that this shaping isn’t about sanding everything down to a perfect finish. It’s about honoring the rough edges and the smooth surfaces alike, trusting that together they create the unique brilliance of a gem.
The estate sale, my brother’s weekend, and a recent weekend camping in Sequoia National Park—they’re all part of the same work: walking alongside each other, holding space for what is rough, delighting in what is smooth, and allowing time, love, and nature to polish us into something more whole.
