What Are You Going to Do With Your Dash?

Lisa Downie Lucero
4 hours ago
2 min read

Born Nov 29, 1978 — ?

Between those two dates lives my entire story.

I recently reflected on the message behind The Dash: Making a Difference with Your Life by Linda Ellis — the idea that on every gravestone, there’s a small dash between the day you’re born and the day you leave this world.

That dash represents everything.

Your love.

Your pain.

Your growth.

Your becoming.

And it stopped me in my tracks.

Because when I look at my own dash, I don’t just see time passing.

I see the people I’ve lost.

The nights I cried until my body felt empty.

The moments I wondered how I would keep going.

I see the day my child’s diagnosis changed my world.

I see the seasons where grief lived in my bones.

I see the version of me who felt broken… and the version who slowly learned that brokenness was becoming wisdom.

But I also see miracles.

I see awakenings.

I see compassion being born from suffering.

I see my heart opening in ways I never expected.

My dash carries the mother I became.

The healer I remembered.

The soul who learned how to rise again.

I don’t know my end date. None of us do.

What I do know is this:

I get to choose how I live in the middle.

I get to choose presence over distraction.

Love over fear.

Truth over silence.

Healing over staying stuck.

I’m not here to be perfect.

I’m here to be real.

Because the dash is where everything happens.

It’s where we learn to forgive.

Where we learn to breathe again after heartbreak.

Where we discover that our pain can become purpose.

Where we remember who we truly are.

And maybe that’s the invitation for all of us:

To stop rushing through our days.

To stop waiting for “someday.”

To start living like this moment matters — because it does.