Refe Tuma

Messy=bad, right? Maybe not. Beautiful things can emerge from a mess — strength and purpose, confidence and trust, empathy and love; people who bring more to the world around them than they take. Every scraped knee, bloody nose, and bruised ego is as unique as a fingerprint, pressing and pinching us, shaping who we are in ways utterly unpredictable. Each one speaks of a risk we’ve taken and messes we’ve made.

In 2013, I wrote an article that was shared over 30 million times, featured on Good Morning America, and syndicated to countless publications across the world. It landed my wife and I a two book publishing deal, a movie option, and opened doors to opportunities we never could have imagined. But what happened when the excitement wore off? Going viral was an exhilarating experience, but the real story lies in what happened next.

Community for community's sake rarely lasts. Why? Because true community is built around meaningful shared experiences. It often begin with a single idea—for us it was a box of plastic dinosaurs and a desire to ignite our kids' imaginations.