When I found my father in 2011, 68 years old, hands shaking from Parkinson's, back hunched over, he was working in a storage unit in Massachusetts, behind a computer, checking one or two people in and out each day, like a gatekeeper. I had traveled to the town he had grown up in because I heard from his estranged sisters that they had seen him from time to time, wandering around the neighborhood on afternoon walks.
I spent years denying my millennial status. Even as I type this, it feels like an apology. Maybe this is because the only words that seemed to be associated with my generation for a long time were negative—“spoiled”, “entitled”, “lazy”, “co-dependent”, “naïve”—and my spoiled, naïve self couldn’t take the criticism.
I know what it’s like to fail and walk in one’s personal hall of shame. In 2009 my first nonprofit venture, the Global Giving Circle, failed after its first event, which ironically was an incredible success.