The Man with the Heart Tattoo.

He pulled up his sleeve and showed me his tattoo, and I immediately got goosebumps.

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Six months ago, I received an email from a Pilates instructor in my community named Stacey. She wanted to share a story about one of her students with me. The student was a father in his late seventies who, along with his wife, had been caring for his daughter for over thirty years. In her first year of life, she experienced seven to eight grand mal seizures a day, landing them in the ICU for weeks at a time. She wasn’t expected to live beyond a few months.

But miraculously, she did. She kept growing, mentally stuck at six months, but physically, becoming the thirty-five-year-old she is today, with a smile that spreads across her whole face.

She is an angel on earth, and her parents are as well. Her mother chooses ballet as an outlet to grow strong so she can continue to care for her daughter. And her father chooses Pilates.

But a little over a year ago, their daughter was diagnosed with cancer. Now, not only were medical expenses increasing, but his daughter was also immunocompromised. The oncologist advised the father against any group classes, but medical bills prevented him from affording private ones.

Which is why Stacey ended up writing to me six months ago.

She wanted to know if More Good could help. She had offered a discount to the man, but it wasn’t enough for him to be able to continue.

Thanks to a generous donor months earlier, I had some money left in More Good’s account. I wrote her a check that week. I was able to cover six months for the man to continue. But the following week, I sat with my sisters, focusing on the man. We wanted to do more for him. We couldn’t imagine his life and the challenges he faced every single day.

Pilates was his outlet; he needed it.

My sister, Sarah, suggested a fundraiser. As a photographer, I immediately envisioned the picture in my mind. A bunch of people all showing up for a man they didn’t know. A Pilates class being held in Mitchell Park, a beautiful park in my hometown that overlooks the water.

I met with Stacey the following week. Before I even mentioned my vision to her, she told me she had always wanted to conduct a class in Mitchell Park. Like almost everything I do with More Good, it felt like kismet.

We created a plan, designed flyers, and invited people to join us in Mitchell Park on August 23.

I am relentlessly, albeit cautiously, optimistic. When we finally had our plan in place, it was for a Saturday morning in August at 8:00 AM. I figured ten or fifteen people would show up. But instead, fifty people arrived. Online donations flowed in. And instead of raising enough money to donate the next six months of private classes to the man, I was able to give him a check for an entire year more of classes.

Five minutes into the class, I grabbed my drone, sent it up into the sky, and snapped the exact photo I had envisioned in my mind months earlier.

A bunch of people showing up for a man they don’t know. A class being held in Mitchell Park, overlooking the water.

Before the class had begun, I ran up to the front to say a few words. I explained how More Good had now morphed from a completed 50-state road trip compiling stories of kindness into a nonprofit. I told the crowd how I was trying to do as much good as I could back in my own community, but how this cause to care for a caretaker was one that was very close to my heart.

And then I told them why.

For over thirty years, I’ve watched my best friend care for her brother, who has a disability. It is a full-time job, one that she shares with her father. It is one of the most beautiful and incredibly humbling things I’ve ever witnessed.

When my mother died, I was living with my best friend at the time. She and I went to get tattoos. I got a tattoo of my mom’s signature from an old card, “Mom” written in script between my thumb and index finger. I liked to imagine how, now, she was forever holding my hand. (Or holding the wheel, for the road trip I was about to go on back then.)

My best friend got one for her brother: “I carry your heart.”

I explained to the crowd how I couldn’t think of a more beautiful way to describe what caretakers do, how they carry another person’s heart every day. As I began to talk about her, I immediately found myself starting to cry. I fumbled through the rest of my words and stepped aside so the class could begin. I imagined people around the world carrying someone else’s heart and caring for them so selflessly.

Later that day, at home, I started calculating the donations, which was when I realized we had made enough for an entire year. Double our goal. “For the most optimistic person I know, you sure can be negative,” a close friend joked with me as I told her the news. She knew how worried I was about how many people would show up and if we would raise enough for six months. And here I was, with a check to give the father another year of his source of strength.

I met with the father and Stacey that week. After telling him the exciting news about the fundraiser and donations we had secretly done, I told him the story of my friend’s tattoo. And how I feel he carries his daughter’s heart, just like she carries her brother’s.

He smiled and pulled up his sleeve.

I immediately got goosebumps.

There, on his right upper arm, was a tattoo of a heart. “It’s my arm and my wife’s arm wrapped around each other, holding our daughter’s heart with our hands.”

I couldn’t imagine the number of things those two arms have had to hold, but I could understand why. Their daughter was their world, but in that world, they needed each other. “Any marriage advice?” I joked, knowing well that statistics for couples with a child with a disability were not favorable.

“Value the differences in each other,” he told me.

And I quietly thought how that advice could really apply to much more than marriage these days.

In valuing our differences, we learn how to respect and become more understanding of those differences. We slowly pry open our hearts a bit more to those around us, becoming aware of where the need is. And then, we can act. We can create a vision. And sometimes we might think only a few people will show up with us. Maybe we will only be able to do so much…

But sometimes the vision comes to life, and you will find yourself surrounded by others showing up, too. And you will be able to give much more than you thought possible. You will be reminded once again that More Good is still out there. You just have to keep looking.