When Continents Connect

We Go On Tour 2023: Bridging the Gap Between Grief & Hope

Travel’s been crazy this year, I’ve already been on 4 different continents. I’ll hit my 5th one next month. Out of all the cities I’ve been to, Istanbul was the craziest. In the span of a week, I was on 3 different continents.

That’s not really all that impressive considering airport travel. There’s a lot of people who can say that. It’s almost like when kids say “I’ll see you next year” on December 31st. You hit em with the audible “ha ha” and keep it moving.

Back to Istanbul though. Istanbul was crazy. I remember looking for a good coffee shop and on the same day my Uber volleyed me from Asia to Europe two different times in a matter of 60 minutes. Here’s the thing about Istanbul…it’s a trans-continental city!!

TRANSCONTINENTAL City! Not country. CITY!

It’s a city of 22 million people that literally spans two continents. Half the city is in Europe and the other half is in Asia. You can take a bridge or a subway across. It was wild being there because we’re not used to traversing continents that quickly.

Continents are BIG & INTIMIDATING.

Until….

We realize that they connect.

Istanbul is a connector of worlds. It’s either one of the most liberal Eastern cities, or one of the most conservative Western cities you’ll find. However you define it, one thing is clear. It straddles every conventional line people think when they think of being tied to a continent. It’s a city where the residents aren’t typical Asian or Europeans. They’re some beautiful mixture of both.

They were FREE. They moved so FREE.

Transitioning from one side to the next was simple.

• No passport.

• No customs.

• No stops.

• No signs that said (now leaving Asia…or now entering Europe).

• Travel between the two continents was free, normal, expected.

Spending a week in this city changed me as two things really stood out.

1. I didn’t know when we crossed over from one side to the next. Both sides felt like a blend of two worlds.

2. I wasn’t forced to stay on either side. One day when I was looking for good coffee, my Uber volleyed me back and forth across continental lines.

It was such a strange experience. It turns out there are only 5 cities in the world that are like this. My hope is to create 13 more! With two different continents that are just as big an intimidating.

Grief & Hope are CONTINENTS

Grief and Hope are continents in the truest sense of the word. They seem BIG and INTIMIDATING. Grief (as a Continent) guards its borders very tightly. Grief doesn’t have very welcoming immigration or travel policies. It feels a little like if North Korea were a continent. As a citizen, you feel like you’ll never get out and Hope isn’t allowed to import anything in.

These continents feel so far apart. Freedom of travel is restricted. Once you arrive on Grief’s shore, it feels like Gilligan’s Island…you don’t ever imagine you’ll make your way off. So you start to settle in and build permanent homes in hopes of just making the best of a situation that won’t ever change. You enter into a deal with yourself. Just settle into despair, agree to never get your hopes up, and you’ll never feel this low again.

In the words of James Baldwin, that’s “A Bargain I Refuse!!”

My hope this fall is to create 13 transcontinental cities, bridging GRIEF & HOPE together. I want to spend one evening creating a vision of what it could feel like to ignore Grief’s strict immigration and travel policy and demonstrate what it’s like to move between these two continents.

• With no passport.

• No customs.

• No stops.

• No signs that say (Now leaving Grief…or Now Entering Hope).

• Where travel between the two sides easy, unhindered, and common.

I want see the look in your eyes when you realize “oh wait a minute…I’m on a different continent?”

I want to see your brows unfurrow and anxiety release it’s grip on your raised shoulders when you walk out of the doors having learned that you can freely travel back and forth from one side of the next.

With that being said, I want to welcome you to the We Go On Tour 2023.

We Go On 2023

We Go On is an evening designed to help you hold on to hope during times that seem to make it so slippery. Come and enjoy an immersive experience in journeying through grief toward hope. 

The We Go On Tour is designed as a next step toward healing. We’ve learned that sometimes the smallest steps are the most important ones - so, we curated a safe space for you to talk (and laugh) about the uncomfortable, intimidating, and sometimes scary topic: Grief. Our time together will be filled with coffee, live music, film, and conversation. Come experience a sense of both anticipation and freedom and leave with a wealth of hope. 

Oh yeah, bring somebody with you because what you experience will be hard to explain later. Tragedy doesn’t ruin us. Hopelessness does. Join us for an evening full of hope!

If your city’s on the list, I hope to see you there. For the rest of this week, there’s an early bird registration on tickets. Click the button below and use the discount code: 4AM.

Peace!