Just Show Up

I've been doing KneeToKnee long enough now that I have a library of conversations I keep going back to. Not because they were the most polished or the most technically interesting. Because something in them has stayed with me.

This episode started as an experiment. Instead of a new guest, I went back through four of those conversations and pulled the moments that made me stop. The moments I've thought about since. I wanted to see if there was a common thread.

There was. And it's almost frustratingly simple.

Chris and the Pies

Chris Williams lost his wife, two of his kids, and an unborn child in a single car accident in 2007. The driver was a 17-year-old who had been drinking.

In the months after, a friend started coming by on Sunday afternoons. He'd bring a couple of Marie Callender's pies. He didn't say much. He just showed up, sat there, and let Chris know someone was thinking about him.

Chris told me it wasn't really about the pies. It was the fact that somebody came. Somebody chose to be there. That kind of presence gave him hope that life could move forward.

I've thought about that a lot. How often I've talked myself out of reaching out because I didn't know what to say. How many times I've told myself someone probably wants space. Chris's story puts a number on the cost of that hesitation.

Ward and the Positive Tickets

Ward Clapham was a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superintendent. He asked one simple question: what if we caught kids doing things right instead of chasing them for doing things wrong?

His department started handing out positive tickets to young people who weren't breaking the law. Just existing in public. They paired the tickets with vouchers for pizza, movies, mini golf. Small stuff.

The results were anything but small. Youth crime dropped by half. Calls for service in the evenings dropped. And here's the detail that got me: a lot of the tickets were never redeemed. Parents wrote to say their kids had pinned them to their bedroom walls. The ticket said someone saw them as a good kid. That mattered more than a free pizza.

Ward's approach was straightforward. He decided to see young people as assets instead of liabilities. That shift changed how his officers showed up, and it changed how the kids responded.

Jeff, Kaylee, and Room 1120

In 2008, I fell 40 feet out of a tree on our property. The weeks at Intermountain Medical Center were hard. Jeff Dodd was my physical therapist. Kaylee Whitehouse Jenkins was my trauma nurse.

Jeff told me about a detail I didn't know. Dr. Hillyard had come across me before surgery, and I was pale and shaking near a window. He realized I might have been reliving the height of the fall. He unlocked the bed, moved me away from the window, and stepped between me and the glass. Nobody asked him to. He just noticed, and he acted.

Kaylee still remembers my room number. 1120. Eighteen years later.

That's not clinical training. That's caring about the person in the bed.

Cotie and the Handcycle

Cotie Williams runs PossAbilities, a Loma Linda University program serving people with permanent disabilities and veterans. She grew it from 280 members to over 9,000.

I met her at a handcycle race in California. She described her job not as organizing the race but as giving people hope and new direction.

She told me about a 27-year-old man who came into the program shortly after a rollover accident left him with a complete spinal cord injury. He owned a plumbing company. His life had flipped in a day. His buddy had told him to find Cotie.

He said he couldn't imagine being stuck in a chair every day. She asked what he was into. He'd never really ridden a bike. She offered him a handcycle to try.

Two weeks later he came back and said the bike wasn't fast enough.

He's now training for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. And he goes back to that same hospital to sit with the people who are where he used to be.

Back to Chris

We ended where we started. Chris.

From the emergency room, while being treated for his own injuries, he asked if the 17-year-old drunk driver was okay. Then he asked people to pray for the boy.

Years later, a woman came up to him after a talk. She was in tears. She said she had been a driver like that. She had hurt someone. She had never been forgiven, never felt any path forward. Chris talked with her. He heard from her afterward. Something had shifted.

His advice at the end of our conversation was direct. For those who are going through something hard: be open to the connections that come. For those who know someone who is struggling: reach out. Don't wait. Don't rehearse what you're going to say. Just be there.

The Common Thread

I pulled four conversations expecting to find different lessons. I found the same one.

Nobody in these stories had the right words. Nobody had a plan. The police officer gave a kid a pizza voucher. The friend brought a pie. The doctor moved a bed. The woman offered a bike.

They just showed up.

If this episode hit you, send it to one person. Not a group text. One person you've been meaning to check on.

📩 Get The One Thing — a weekly note from Mark every time a new episode drops: https://bit.ly/4eIs6gf

🎙️ KneeToKnee — connection that compounds. https://youtu.be/D7K11RwC7kc