Get out there

Putting yourself out there is something that is incredibly hard for people to do. This past weekend I had the opportunity to continue a project I have been doing for over a year. I have been fortunate to travel around from place to place speaking to young people to teens to adults to senior and give them the opportunity to ask any question they want an answer to.

This "asking" has taken place in many different ways from balloon launches to placing questions in a bottle to putting them in books at library's and other bookstores to just handing a bunch of question from one school to another.

This experiment certainly has always brought about many amazing questions and even better has produced a wide variety of answers. One great example of this was when a teen wrote about his/her verbal abuse that they were taking at home from their parents. Roughly 3 months later a woman responded saying that she to had gone through that experience and she gave some of the tips she had to deal with it. After I posted the question and response there were so many others that wrote back and thanked me for posting that particular exchange because they too were going through something similar.

After I spent just a couple of hours doing this with a group of teenagers this past weekend I have, more than ever, come to realize that we don't ask enough questions. For some they have wonderful outlets to ask but for others there just isn't that outlet, that freedom of being safe from judgment, that honesty and trust.

I will continue to do this project and in the meantime am always encouraging others to put themselves out there. Ask the questions you want answers to big or small, because you are not alone.