Sixty Years of Being Shown Up For

by L.S. "Bo" Dean Jr.

On August 7, I turn sixty.

I have been thinking about what that number actually contains. Not the birthdays themselves, but the long, unbroken chain of places, people, and institutions that made each one possible. Because here is the truth I keep arriving at: none of us gets to sixty alone. None of us gets to six alone.

I was a child with severe asthma. Before I could give anything to the world, the world was already giving to me — hospitals that kept my lungs working, a carousel in a Raleigh park that gave a sick kid a reason to laugh, a planetarium ceiling full of stars in Chapel Hill that taught me the universe was bigger than my worry. I didn't earn any of that. It showed up for me.

And it kept showing up. Through college theater and a community college honor society. Through the rooms of recovery, where thirty-seven years ago people who had nothing to gain from my survival decided to invest in it anyway. Through churches and chapels where I learned that love is not a feeling but a practice. Through parks and trails and beaches and river water that regulated my nervous system long before I had the language of resilience to describe what they were doing. Through animal shelters that brought me companions, and scholarships — some I helped create, and one, astonishingly, created in my name — that turned gratitude into a current that flows toward students I will never meet.

In the Community Resiliency Model, we call these things resources — the people, places, memories, and experiences that steady us, that our bodies remember as safety. The skill is called Resourcing, and it sounds simple: notice what sustains you. Return to it. Let it do its work.

I have come to believe that a life well lived is really just Resourcing practiced at scale, over decades, with receipts.

So as I approach sixty, I made the list. All of it — or as much as memory allows. From the hospital that treated a wheezing boy to the resilience task force I serve today. From a bargain barn in Connecticut to the National Cathedral. It is the map of my survival, my recovery, my joy, my faith, my marriage, my work, and my hope.

And here is what I want, if you feel moved to help me celebrate this birthday:

I don't need things. I need to remember the things.

At this point in my life, there is nothing you could wrap that I would treasure more than knowing that something on this list received a gift because I was born. If one of these places kept you alive too — give there. If one of them is unfamiliar — maybe let it become familiar. Pick the one that speaks to your own story, because I promise you have a list like this too, whether you've written it down or not.

That may be the real invitation here. Every one of us has been sustained by things we did not build and could never repay. The only sane response to that kind of debt is not guilt — it's circulation. We give back to what sustains us, and in doing so we keep it alive for the next asthmatic kid, the next newcomer in a church basement, the next student one scholarship away from a different life.

That is how we continue to see, and give, and grow. That is what I mean when I say we become greater than — through love and support.

The List: A Life in Sixty Years of Gratitude

Every name below is a link — but I've also written out the full address underneath, in case the link doesn't come through when this posts. Click, tap, or copy and paste. Every one of them is part of why I'm here.

Whatever you choose — thank you. Not for the gift, but for joining the circulation. Sixty years from now, someone will be making their own list, and something you gave today might be on it.

Bo Dean's Blog In Wilmington North Carolina

1st Day of this Journey!

Tuesday, July 21, 2026