MEET dax and Sam

Some circles grow. Others get smaller.

As you know, on my recent trip I added several new states to our Kindness Card map. One of them was Wisconsin, where I met Dax and Sam at a mall in Madison. 

Earlier that morning I'd arranged to meet Tere, a longtime reader in the area. She'd reached out after seeing on social media that I was passing through and asked if she could spend the afternoon learning how the Kindness Card Movement works.

She didn't come to just watch. She asked questions, handed out cards, and stepped into conversations most people would avoid. One of those conversations was with Dax and Sam.

They've been married for 15 years, which is rare among the unhoused people I've met. They told us they can't imagine navigating this life without each other.

When I asked where they sleep, they said they live in their vehicle.

When I asked about addiction, Dax reached for Sam's hand. "Let's just be transparent," he said.

And they were.

Dax said drinking started when he was still a young teenager. Sam grew up above the bar her parents owned, where alcohol was within reach long before she understood what 

it could take away.

They told me more than I'll share here. Injuries came first. The recoveries came after, and neither of them came back the same.

Before life spiraled, they owned a home. They had careers. They built the life a lot of people spend years working toward. They're proof that homelessness can hit faster than most of us want to believe.

As we sat together, Sam asked if she could send me a few photos from earlier in their lives. 

A moment later, they appeared on my phone, and I immediately understood why. They wanted me to know them as more than the hardest chapter of their lives. 

Looking at these three photos, it wasn't hard to picture the home they described, the careers they built, and the ordinary life they were working so hard to find again.

But what I keep coming back to wasn't the addiction.

It was friendship.

They said one of the hardest parts of addiction and homelessness is watching your circle shrink.

Friends you've known for years stop calling. Messages go unanswered. Invitations stop coming.

Usually it isn't cruelty. People simply don't know what to say, so they say nothing.

The silence slowly does its work.

I thought about my own circle.

Before we sat down in that food court, I'd only known Tere from social media. But now we're friends because kindness brought us to the same place. 

Every city I visit adds someone — people who show up, buy a meal, share a story, encourage a stranger they'll probably never meet.

This movement has made my circle bigger than I ever imagined.

Life has made Dax and Sam's smaller.
That stayed with me on the rest of my drive home.

Before we said goodbye, your generosity bought them Chinese food in the mall food court where we met. 

We ordered enough for lunch and dinner, and the Kindness Cards stayed in their pockets for another day.

They both told us they still believe they'll find their way back to the life they once had.

They've lived it before.

They believe they can live it again.

I hope they're right.

And I hope they left knowing their circle grew a little that afternoon — by two people sitting across the table...

...and by thousands more they'll never meet.