When we think about our life and the people who have inspired us, several people come to mind. My mom, my mom’s mom, my uncle who passed away from AIDS, or ARC, all the people we know/who have known who have fought cancer, the ones we knew that passed away too early from Cystic Fibrosis, and Stephen Colbert. 

We have experienced our fair share of loss in our relatively short life. It’s an interesting fact of life we don’t share with a lot of people we interact with on an everyday basis. These experiences have absolutely had a major impact on the way we view our life. 

We watched as my mom held our family together, took care of us and never missed a day of work while watching her dear family members fight and subsequently loose their battles. We watched our grandmother keep everyone together while burying 2 husbands, 2 kids and several close family members with grace and humor. When we lost her suddenly a few years ago, it changed our extended family dynamic forever. She was the glue that managed to hold everyone together. 

We have always admired Colbert as a comedian, but recently even more so from the interviews he’s given recently on grief and suffering and how he’s managed to lead a successful and happy life. It is rare that we have an honest conversation about death and suffering in the media. Colbert has opened up that opportunity. He spoke both in the GQ interview and with his conversation with Vice President  Biden about the importance of accepting suffering and not being defeated by it. We absolutely relate to how he closed the GQ interview with how everyday “we are volunteers”. We are! It is absolutely our choice how we interpret and react to things that happen in our lives. 

We live our lives with the awareness that we have several angels looking out for us, and the knowledge that life can change in the blink of an eye. We do get caught up in the small things, but generally only temporarily. For we truly know that people are fighting much harder battles on an everyday basis. These are the people that continue to inspire us.