Eight things we hold firmly
These are not a complete statement of everything we believe — just the values that shape everything on this site. We arrived at them not through theory, but through living.
These are not abstract ideals. Every one of them was earned — through failure, through pain, through the slow and humbling work of becoming. We share them not as a finished creed but as an honest account of what life has taught us so far.
1. It’s all about people.
We live in a world that rewards analysis, efficiency, and results. And both of us spent years operating primarily from that framework — especially professionally. But somewhere along the way, each of us came to understand that the metrics we were optimizing for were the wrong ones. At the end of the day, what remains is not what you accomplished. It is who you loved, and how.
Early in my career I was known as an analytical thinker, and I leaned into that identity. Then one day, a colleague I barely knew said something that changed the course of my life. He told me he had learned that at the end of the day, it’s all about people and relationships. I don’t even remember his name. I doubt he knows the impact he had on me. But his words became the rule by which I try to live. Whether it’s a colleague at work, one of our children, a dear friend, or the cashier at the grocery store — I strive to treat everyone with dignity and respect. I try to make sure everyone feels seen and cared about. I still have a long way to go. But I have watched this simple principle improve everything from business results to broken relationships. I truly believe it: it’s all about people.
2. We don’t judge. We try to understand.
Judgment is easy. It requires no effort, no curiosity, no humility. Understanding is harder — it requires you to sit with someone else’s reality long enough to actually see it. We have both been on the receiving end of judgment during our divorces, and we have both had to reckon honestly with how much we had judged others before our own lives fell apart. The question we try to ask now is not “what is wrong with you?” but “what happened to you?” It changes everything.
It is embarrassing to look back and recognize how judgmental I was before my divorce. I didn’t think I was. I rarely voiced it. But I carried a quiet, self-righteous certainty that when other people’s lives fell apart — a lost job, a wayward child, a failing marriage — it was somehow their fault. My struggles were just part of life. Theirs were evidence of some personal shortcoming. And then I got divorced. Nothing had ever mattered more to me than my family and my marriage. And it failed. The judgment I had quietly aimed at others came back to me with full force — and I finally understood what I had been doing. The change in how I see people since then has been, without exaggeration, life-altering.
When my former spouse began dating right after our separation, I was deeply judgmental. I believed it was inappropriate, and I held him to my standard. Over time I began to see it differently. He was hurting too. He was coping the only way he knew how. Eventually he met a remarkable woman who had endured significant challenges of her own. Part of me hoped they could be happy, but if I’m honest, there was a small part that doubted it would last. When his second marriage ended sometime later, I almost expected to feel vindicated. But I didn’t! What came instead was genuine compassion. The work I had done on myself had quietly changed me. The part of me that once wanted his failure for my own validation was simply no longer there.
3. Authenticity matters more than appearances.
We live in a culture — and a religious community — where appearances matter enormously. Where the image of a good life can become more important than the actual living of one. Both of us spent years maintaining versions of ourselves that were carefully managed, carefully presented, carefully protected. Divorce made that impossible. And in the wreckage of those carefully constructed images, we discovered something we hadn’t expected: relief. The freedom that comes from no longer needing to pretend is one of the most unexpected gifts our hardest experiences gave us.
For most of my adult life I went to great lengths to make sure I never fell off my white horse — not in my own eyes, and especially not in the eyes of my family. Honesty was a virtue I genuinely valued and tried to practice. But I slowly came to realize that the carefully maintained image I was projecting was itself a form of dishonesty. Going through a divorce made it impossible to keep up the illusion. And in losing the illusion, I found something I hadn’t known I was missing. Today, authenticity is one of my core values — not as an abstract ideal but as a daily practice. It is still hard. But it is infinitely better than the alternative.
4. Healing is not dependent on someone else changing.
This is one we have observed more than lived personally — and perhaps that outside perspective has made it even clearer to us. We have watched people we love deeply remain in real pain, not because healing wasn’t available to them, but because they were waiting for something from another person that may never come. Waiting for an apology. Waiting for acknowledgment. Waiting for the other person to suffer enough to make it feel fair. We understand the impulse. It makes a certain kind of emotional sense. But healing does not work that way. It does not come from seeing another person suffer. It does not require that they change, or repent, or even recognize what they did. Healing is something that happens inside you — and it is available to you right now, regardless of what anyone else does or doesn’t do.
We have sat with friends and family members who are years — sometimes decades — past the end of a relationship and still carrying the full weight of it. Still angry. Still rehearsing the story. Still waiting for justice that isn’t coming. We don’t say this with judgment — we say it with genuine sorrow, because we have seen what that waiting costs people. The years it consumes. The relationships it poisons. The joy it quietly prevents. If there is one thing we want every reader of this site to hear, it is this: you do not have to wait. Your healing is not in anyone else’s hands. It is in yours.
5. Peace is possible — and it can be learned.
We did not arrive at peace automatically. It was not given to us as a reward for surviving hard things. It came as the result of specific choices — choices to let go of worry, to release control, to stop fighting battles we could not win. Peace, we have learned, is not the absence of difficulty. It is what becomes possible when we stop requiring circumstances to be different before we allow ourselves to be okay.
We have several adult children, each facing their own challenges — some more serious than others. Because they are grown, we have had to learn to step back and allow them to make their own choices, even when those choices lead them down difficult paths. Every instinct as a parent wants to step in, to fix, to guide, to protect. But we came to understand that trying to control or manage their lives is neither possible nor helpful. After many conversations, Bruce and I reached a simple but powerful realization: we don’t have to carry the burden of worry. Worry doesn’t change their decisions — it only brings us unnecessary pain. So we made a conscious choice to let it go. In that moment, we felt a peace greater than anything we had experienced before. It was genuinely liberating. Now we see our children in different stages of life, exploring the spaces they live in — and our relationships with them have improved, especially since they can feel we are not judging them. Only loving them.
6. Kindness is love in action.
We have come to believe that a person’s true character can be measured by their capacity for kindness — especially toward those who cannot benefit them, and especially toward those who have been unkind to them. Kindness is not weakness. It is not naivety. It is one of the most disciplined and intentional things a person can practice. Sometimes it is words. Sometimes it is silence. Sometimes it is leaning in. Sometimes it is stepping back. But it is always a choice, and it is always worth making.
My grandfather was the greatest example of kindness I have ever known. When I was about eight years old, I was helping him move farm equipment to a lower field. The task involved me driving a tractor and trailer out of the corral. Grandpa gave me specific instructions — including a warning to take a very wide turn. I assured him I would. Then I cut the corner. The trailer hooked his brand new aluminum gate and rolled it into an ugly mess. I can still remember the terror I felt as I followed him down to the field, knowing I would have to explain what happened. When I told him, his only response was: “I tried to warn you about that.” No anger. No frustration — even though I knew I had just destroyed something he was genuinely excited about. The first non-wooden gate on the farm. Together we straightened out the badly bent mess as best we could, hung it back on its hinges, and there it stayed for the rest of my growing-up years. In that moment he taught me that people are always more important than things. That gate was a monument to his kindness for the rest of his life. And the memory of it is one of the most important things he left me.
7. Contention is a choice — and so is peace.
Disagreements are inevitable. Contention is not. There is an important difference between having a conflict and allowing it to become corrosive. We have both had to learn this — that staying calm is not the same as choosing peace, that being right is not worth the cost of a relationship, and that pretending to agree is not peacemaking. It is something else entirely. Real peace requires honesty, patience, and genuine care for the person across from you.
Years ago, serving as a missionary, I tried to persuade a librarian to let me check out a film to show to a family we were teaching. She explained that the policy was that only members of the clergy could check it out. I kept pressing my case — arguing that as a missionary, I was in fact a member of the clergy. Eventually she relented, more out of exasperation than conviction. She was clearly frustrated and angry. I walked away with a self-righteous sense of satisfaction, telling myself that because I hadn’t raised my voice or lost my temper, I had done nothing wrong. I have long since understood that I was the one at fault. Remaining calm while persistently wearing someone down is not avoiding contention. It is creating it with a pleasant expression on your face. I have never forgotten that librarian. She taught me that it is not enough to avoid contention. We have to actively choose peace.
8. We cannot be happier than we allow others to be.
This is perhaps the most counterintuitive thing on this list — and the one we feel most certain about. The degree to which we are able to wish others well, to release resentment, to genuinely hope for the happiness of people who have hurt us, is directly connected to the degree of peace and happiness we are able to experience ourselves. This is not a platitude. It is something we have witnessed repeatedly — in our own lives and in the lives of those around us.
People sometimes ask how I can seem so at peace after going through a divorce. I don’t feel I’ve done anything to deserve it, and I don’t fully understand it myself. But when I talk with others who have been through similar experiences, I notice something: many of them still carry real bitterness and resentment toward their former spouse. They want everyone to know how terrible that person is. They see them as the enemy. I don’t feel anything like that. Even though I experienced genuine pain and anguish before and during my divorce, I still love my former spouse. I genuinely hope she finds every happiness. Please don’t take this to mean I divorced lightly or without real reason — that couldn’t be further from the truth. But somehow I did not come out of it with bitterness or a desire to see her suffer. I’m not entirely sure why. But I have come to believe that this — more than anything else — is central to the peace and happiness I now enjoy. We truly cannot be happier than we are willing to allow others to be.
“None of these came easily. All of them were earned.”
We are still learning every one of them. We share them not because we have arrived, but because we are further along the path than we once were — and because someone once shared things with us that helped us find our way. We hope these do the same for you.