Whaaaaaaaaaat??? Wait a minute! What an embarrassing typo. We all know it’s better to give than to receive. Right? So, what’s up here? Am I just saying this to be provocative or is this the ultimate example of dyslexia with ENTIRE WORD swapping?

Well, maybe a little bit of all of the above.

I’m super excited to announce that over the past few months I have finally fully embraced (or at least mostly embraced) the notion that it is at least “okay” to actually accept things from others. Accept help, accept compliments, accept donations. I’d dipped my toe into the idea that yes - it’s “okay.” I was a novice at this so I wasn’t running around pell mell saying, “I’m prepared…

So, back from sabbatical and remiss in posting a blog yet, partially on accounta trying to decide the best gem to share about the break and partially on accounta it’s “that time of the year” when we’re getting everything UP and RUNNING. Which brings us to this blog, when I recount a tale in which I was neither up nor running.

I bring you now the LIVING METAPHOR for what I learned on sabbatical. I’d flown into London - whee - so exciting - can’t wait to eat some warm tasty scones and hear English pronounced like, well, English. I’m traveling light-ish so I take my two little rolling bags and hop on the tube into the city. I arrive at Paddington Station (I didn’t really arrive at Paddington Station, but wouldn’t that have been so cool if I did…

WELCOME BACK, LORI!

Lori Madrid is on her way back soon from a sabbatical. Cheers to professional stability and the profound mind shifts that come from a heartfelt, hard-earned healthy break!

Let’s welcome her back with a blog in her honor…

Our CEO, founder and head visionary Lori Madrid, MSW, LCSW is on a sabbatical with absolute faith in her crackerjack team to keep the well-oiled machine that is Everybody Matters running smoothly while she is out.

Yeah, you read that correctly. I’m mad at the whole Everybody Matters team, so read on as I spill the tea! You wanna read this - it’s super juicy!

Here’s the deal - I woke up one morning last Fall and didn’t want to come to work.

I panicked.

Now I realize that this may not be out of the norm for some people, but in my 57 years on the planet I have NEVER not wanted to come to work. Even if I knew it was going to be a tough day - I still wanted to go - I love a challenge.

Just when you thought Everybody Matters couldn’t get any better - we have launched…..

Wait for it …..

Everybody THRIVES!!

Yep, we now offer virtual sessions to people at an affordable sliding scale!

• Specifically we can assist with:

• Enhancing Relationships

• Emerging from a sense of “feeling stuck”

• Finding a new Direction

• Navigating Life Transitions…

So here’s what went down. Last weekend I decided to use the light rail for the first time. I was in downtown Phoenix and thought this would be fun. You know - help the environment and all that.

So, I’m trying to get a ticket from the kiosk, and the whole while, in my peripheral vision, I see a guy leaning against a post in kind of fatigues with a ski mask over his head and face. It’s not ski mask weather. I take note of this. The best I can tell, there’s no place he could hiding a major weapon. But still, come on, this is a bit sketch.

The kiosk won’t take my credit card. Then it won’t take my debit card. Then it won’t take my cash. And the whole while there’s a guy in a mask leaning against a post - this is a bit sketch.

Ew! Lori, why would you title your blog’ “Unhappy Holidays”? Is that a weird typo? What’s wrong with you, woman?

Nope, that was intentional folks. This is an important message - but at least I waited to send it until you’d all eaten your cookies and opened your presents. Right? At least you got to chime in the New Year and make those resolutions you’ve already forgotten (tee hee). At least I had the holiday spirit to do THAT!

And as if unhappy holidays weren’t enough of a bummer, many of our kiddos are facing a pretty bleak New Year too. I’m not saying this to be buzzkill Barbie. I’m saying it because it’s true. Because, on the regular, our team is meeting with young people across Arizona whose lives are in disarray, and despite their parents’ best efforts, things are just HARD -- like, ALL THE TIME!

I think the combination of my purple shirt and gray hair is the reason I was accosted. And maybe saying accosted is a bit dramatic, and maybe it’s more fun to be a little dramatic, but for the sake of accuracy I’ll start over here.

So, I’d just finished facilitating a super fun social emotional group on an elementary school playground and, wearing my perfectly branded Everybody Matters Purple Polo, I was wading through a swarm of running, jumping, gleeful second graders when I noticed a different second grader running full speed towards me, and as he approached I realized he was not at all gleeful and he was barely able to stop short before barreling into me.

I got unexpected money in the mail.

Isn't it funny that when we read something like that, it can take a second to take it in, because we're more used to hearing people say "I got this BILL in the mail that I didn’t know about and now, what I’m I going to do?"

This was opposite that. I got unexpected money in the mail…

Tristan burst into my office shouting “that was the best therapy session I’ve ever done!” Which is basically the social worker’s version of spiking the ball in the end zone! To say he was floating is an over statement, but not much of one, and his words tripped over themselves as he paced back and forth recounting that this lady has made so much progress in such a short time and she had been so worried about coming to therapy in the first place and she was so committed to getting better and she was paying attention to her patterns and taking responsibility and and and and and…. And as Tristan gushed about the woman’s success…

Ah, the sights and smells of back to school! Huge primary colored posters in stores touting the best binders and newest backpack designs. Bright shiny new packs of crayons and markers organized perfectly on the store shelves or overflowing in those giant bins. And let’s admit it, even though those crayons are still in their packages you can smell ‘em, can’t you? Yes, you can! You remember that smell. And let's face it, maybe some of you can even TASTE 'em. You tasters were a wilder breed of elementary student!

And then the epic - insert drum roll here - Back to School/Meet the Teacher night!! Last week I represented Everybody Matters at one, and was honored to bear witness to the drama that is middle school.

So, a while back I was talking with an organization in Staten Island, New York about partnering with them and bringing Everybody Matters to the East Coast. One of the people on the call was a high powered community organizer who had worked both for the city and the state, and as I explained how we started the program, she politely interrupted and said, “Uh, wait a minute. Are you telling me that a school district just let you pilot this program? That doesn’t make sense. Districts aren’t nimble enough to let someone do that? How did it make it through committee? How did it make it through the board? This is nothing short of a miracle!

"You got that right!” I said, “And the Miracle’s name is Kim Guerin."

This blog is late. Super. Duper. Late. Like a week overdue. Or more? I lost track. I was supposed to have it completed prior. I’d made a commitment. We created a schedule and I had an obligation. I promised.

I failed.

Oh wait, I forgot to tell you this part. I got COVID. Yep. Right when this lovely blog was due, I was a nose blowing, body aching, mind clouded mess. So, I was sent the reminder to fulfill my promise, but couldn’t write a thing.

And it nagged at me that I was failing. But my head hurt behind my eyeball and my ears were kinda ringing so I acquiesced to failure and realized something pretty important.

I failed. And. It. Didn’t. Matter.

People often ask, "why did you name your program Everybody Matters?" The answer is unexpected and beautiful.

Prior to founding Everybody Matters, I was a school social worker at a Jr. High and the Vice Principal asked me if I'd be willing to run afterschool detention.

"Nope," I said. "I don't believe that punishment changes behavior, so I'm not in the punishment business. HOWEVER I'll happily create an afterschool Skills of Success class, and you can change the roster daily and I'll meet with students and teach them alternative behaviors to use when they are stressed…

So, in my “Senior Prophecy” back in 1984 … yes, I said, 1984! (Please don’t do the math about my graduation date because the sum will just be Lori = Old. )

In that prophecy, my classmates in my small Wyoming town determined that I would become a nun and start an orphanage in an even smaller nearby town. So, not being Catholic put the kabosh on the nun idea, and I moved far away from either of these two little towns, which was strike two, BUT…

Catchy tagline, huh?? Sure - that’ll get their attention! It just rolls off your tongue!

I say, “Everybody.” You say, “Matters” “Everybody Matters, Everybody Matters!”

I say, “Everybody.” You say, “Wins” “Everybody Wins, Everybody Wins!”

And here’s the deal. They do.

Everybody really DOES win…

Gobbling up all these great new ideas.

And when the training ends, we shrug our shoulders and say, "okay - we just gave you the very itty bitty basics - you know nothing yet - your real teachers will be the kiddos."

"Huh? What?" they say…

At Everybody Matters we’re not horsing around … except when we are. We consistently think outside of the box and sometimes even into the arena - so we partnered with The Heart of the Matter so our interns could learn about Equine Therapy utilizing the Eagala model. Here’s what it was like, right from the horse’s … whoops, I mean, interns’ mouths:

Being at The Heart of The Matter was a magical experience. I immediately felt at ease and comforted being around the animals and my peers

So, even though I’m the CEO, I still do direct practice whenever I can - you know, if I don’t have a little dried play-doh caked under my fingernails at the end of the day, I’m not sure I’ve been working hard enough. And last week, when a young boy and I were reviewing the progress he’s been making on learning to be a good friend we came across a picture he’d drawn of me the second week we met.

He looked at it and was a little confused and said, “wait, I forgot your gray hair!”

Ever had one of those internships where your supervisor is super talented but also harried and although you are shadowing and kind of learning along the way, it feels a little like you’re just “along for the ride”? That’s usually how it works and it SHOULD work that way because social workers are rushing around solving crises on the daily, and interns simply can’t be their first priority.

Unless of course the interns are at Everybody Matters where they are the PRIORITY ONE.