We need to talk about what happened on Monday Night Football. Not about Damar or his current status, though we should keep him in our prayers. What we really need to talk about is the fact that we witnessed more than a hundred grown men experience Trauma in real time. And we, as a society, didn’t know how to handle it…

Just before the summer sun faded into a back-to-school breeze, I sat in the midday shade on the patio of my favorite coffee shop. Distracted by passersby, I glanced up from my computer to see two thirteen-ish-year-old boys walking down the street with (presumably) one of their mothers. The mom asked her not-son “How’s life?”

“Life is…” He paused, calculating the right response. His shoulders tensed as his face turned red. Tears welled up behind his glasses and he blurted out, “Life is…not good.”

In mid-August, amidst the weeks of sweltering temps, I’d taken to driving with my windows down blasting Church Girl on repeat. My enthusiasm was rooted in reliving that first …I’ll drop it like a thottie, with the same “Oh Shit!” surprise as the first time, every time. This meant I usually hit replay before I made it to the final seconds of the song. But one afternoon, sitting at a stop light, the sun beating through my windshield while the beat faded back towards The Clark Sisters sample, and I heard Queen B state her case firmly, directly, divinely: “I ain’t tryin’ to hurt nobody. Tryin’ to bring the life up in your body.”

When I left for Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, I had a job lined up for my return home. First, I would attend a monthlong retreat as the perfect bookend to my 18-month sabbatical. My own Eat, Pray, Love journey to heal my body, nourish my soul, and figure out what the hell I wanted to do with my life…