When you believe in something deeply, sometimes the hardest part is explaining it to someone else.
You can tell someone what you believe. You can give them reasons. You can try to convince them. But I’ve noticed something: when you say, “Just imagine this…” people seem to listen differently.
It’s almost like you’ve opened a door.
Because imagination is an incredibly interesting place.
Some things I have sincerely imagined have eventually come true—not necessarily exactly as I pictured them, and not necessarily in the way I expected, but somehow, some way, pieces of them have found their way into my life.
And that has made me think about the difference between imagining and reimagining.
Right now, I am reimagining grief.
My dog, Casey, has stage-three kidney disease. And she is still Casey. She is hip-hopping around, getting her fluids, taking her medicines, living her life and being the absolute best.
I know there will be sadness—a feeling of loss—after she is gone.
And yes, I can imagine that.
But why should I?
Why should I experience a grief today that has not happened today?
That is where conscious grieving has started to mean something different to me.
I am only going to grieve what comes.
I don’t need to imagine tomorrow’s grief. I don’t need to rehearse losing her while she is still here. I don’t need to create sadness in advance in an attempt to prepare myself for sadness later.
Instead, when grief actually comes my way, I can meet it there.
And then I can reimagine it.
That doesn’t mean pretending something isn’t sad. It doesn’t mean forcing positivity onto pain. It means taking whatever arrives—the sadness, fear, anger, loneliness, gratitude, memories, even joy—and asking:
What else can this become?
Maybe that is part of what Bring: Be Reimagined really means to me.
Bring me what is here.
And then let me see what I can make of it.
This is actually an extraordinary opportunity for me to try my own remedy.
Because I think we have a communication problem—not only with one another, but with ourselves. We struggle to communicate between people, communities, countries and entire groups because we’re often so busy explaining what we see that we forget to invite another person to imagine what we see.
“Just imagine…”
Those two words can change a conversation.
And grief is showing me something else, too.
We need community.
We need to reimagine what community means and broaden our horizons.
During this experience with Casey, I started imagining myself surrounded by people who genuinely love me. Not hundreds of people. Not people who simply occupy space in my life. I imagined being surrounded by people who actually pour love into me when I need it, just as I try to pour love into them when they need it. A true symbiotic relationship.
And something interesting happened.
My life started changing.
Some people began falling away.
People I had been pouring into without receiving much in return suddenly became very obvious to me. During a time when I needed love and support myself, I could finally see the imbalance.
At first, losing people can feel like another loss.
But maybe it isn’t good.
Maybe it isn’t bad.
Maybe it’s necessary.
Life changes. Relationships change. People grow together, and sometimes they grow apart. And sometimes grief has a strange way of illuminating who is actually standing beside you.
Casey’s illness hasn’t only taught me about losing.
It has taught me about seeing.
Seeing what is here instead of grieving what isn’t here yet.
Seeing who shows up instead of chasing who doesn’t.
Seeing all that is with pure, honest love, hope and peace.
And seeing that reimagining something doesn’t require denying reality.
It means looking directly at reality and asking:
What else could this mean?
What could this teach me?
What could this become?
And what can I become through it?
I don’t want to imagine my grief before it arrives.
I want to love what is here.
And when something changes, I will meet that change when it comes.
Then I will grieve it.
Consciously.
And, when I’m ready, I will reimagine it.
