A complete stranger breaks down crying — here's what we did

She sat down beside my daughter and immediately began crying...

On Sunday afternoon, my daughter and I boarded a Lufthansa flight to Spain for her Fall Break. We were able to change seats so that I could move into a row with more legroom. The flight attendant explained a woman would be coming to join the aisle seat.

This woman was obviously distraught. It took her a while to get her luggage into the overhead bin. Then, the moment she sat down, she began crying.

Wilder looked at me.

"Mom," she whispered, "I feel bad for her — I want to help."

"I know, babe."

But here's where adulthood gets in the way of compassion and empathy...

We've learned to respect someone else's space. We've learned what pride and ego, shame and embarrassment feel like. We don't know what the right thing to do is anymore, because our brains have become muddled with messaging that it's more about us feeling "safe" than us as a community feeling "sure" we're connected.

The stranger then turned to us.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not usually emotional on a flight."

"It's okay," I told her. "Is there anything we can do?" I paused. "My daughter wanted to check on you to make sure you're okay."

"Oh, that's very sweet," she said as she looked at my daughter. "My mother just passed away and I came from Madrid to attend her services, and now I'm on my way back."

Over the next 13 hours, my daughter befriended this stranger.

They talked about grief. About school. About what it's like to come from a divorced family.

At some point, I fell asleep and when I awoke, my daughter showed me a rope bracelet this woman had purchased from the airplane catalog for my daughter. The woman had moved into a different row to give my daughter room to lie down and sleep.

"She wanted us to remember her," my daughter said.

By the time we deplaned, we were off to find our connecting flight and she was off to do the same.

That was it — an interaction, a bracelet, a connection for a moment in time.

When we went to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao today, there was a moment at the top of three flights of stairs when my daughter became nervous.

She pulled me back from the bridge that connected two wings. She didn't want to go.

We made it to an outlook and she wouldn't let me move forward.

"Babe, what's going on?"

"I don't want to fall off!" she said nervously.

I bent down to her.

"It's okay, Love. Look at me. Take some deep breaths. You can do this. You can hold onto me, and I'll be right here. Step by step."

She took a deep inhale.

She took a deep exhale.

She grabbed onto my entire torso.

We made it to the edge.

"Look, Love," I pointed out to the art installation one level down that you could only fully appreciate if you were up top. "We can go down there next and now you see what we'll be walking through."

A few minutes later, my daughter looked at me.

"Thank you, Mom," she said. "Thank you for making it okay for me to feel my feelings and encouraging me to work through it."

I didn't have this kind of relationship with my mother.

It makes me think about the grief the woman who sat next to us on the plane felt for her mother.

I think how the depth of pain is often correlated to how much you have loved. How much you have let people in. How much you have offered yourself to someone else...

Safe spaces transform lives.

Before we flew out, I completed a Breakthrough Session with a client where we spent two days in a shared virtual space. When I used to teach yoga, I knew how vital it was to create a space that felt welcoming and nonjudgmental.

You can only heal when you feel safe to do so.

My daughter could approach her fear because I reassured her she could. Because I didn't judge her for being afraid.

The stranger on the plane connected with my daughter, because my daughter opened up to her about her own grief and her own life experiences, just from the nine years she's been on this planet.

Find the people who create safe spaces for you.

It can happen personally.

It can happen professionally.

What I love about the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program is how safely we are encouraged to approach what we don't know within our businesses.

And, to have experts advocate for how brave we are to be on this journey of doing the unconventional, managing the risks and responsibilities, and doing it while knowing what's at stake.

If you're feeling any doubt, listen to this audio reframing imposter syndrome from John Whaley, one of the top Business Strategists on LinkedIn, and what he shared on our GS10KSB call last week — it's worth it.

Love,

Judy

P.S. If you'd like to connect for personal branding and mindset coaching, schedule a complimentary meet + greet.