A reminder that real strength has nothing to do with fitting into the expectations of a crowd, with being what people want you to be, with avoiding their laughter or courting their approval.

Real strength, my son taught an entire auditorium, and his own father, and me, is about standing firm in your love.

It is about honoring your roots, and the people who made you, and the people you have lost.

And it is about having the courage to carry the ones you love out of the darkness and into the light, up onto the stage, into the sun, into the sight of the whole laughing world, so that they are seen, and remembered, and impossible to overlook, no matter who is laughing.

My daughter Lily was afraid of being forgotten.