Tell Me What’s Good
The Tell Me What’s Good approach is where 4those really began.
In the darkest times in the NICU after our son Zev was born, we were met with devastating daily - hourly - updates that threatened to leave us feeling hopeless and lost in a sea of confusion, uncertainty, and grief.
To change the narrative, we began insisting that our meetings with medical staff begin differently. “Tell me what’s good”, we would say, imploring doctors to find a ray of hope in the dark.
So much of the narrative around extreme prematurity can point to what many would consider less: our son would never walk or talk or eat or breathe on his own, he would be blind, he would never be able to have a healthy and thriving life (if he was lucky enough to even have a life at all), his story and our story would end here, in grief and despair and suffering, without hope in a future, that none of this suffering would be worth it or matter.
“There is grace and there are miracles underfoot when we step out of our fear and walk boldly into an unknown future, believing that no matter what comes, we will rise.”
Tell Me What’s Good. interrupts and challenges that way of thinking. It took what would be for our son and our lives and turned it into what could be instead.
Saying these four words did not change our circumstances or the outcomes we faced, but it did create a sense of balance, of the fuller picture, when faced with impossible choices. Each time we said it, we found ourselves not in despair, but in possibility and in hope through acceptance of what was unfolding and surrender to the outcome.
The hope we reclaimed through Tell Me What’s Good. was not tied to an outcome - whether Zev lived or died or never, never, never - but instead became a posture of expectation that no matter what came next, Love would meet us and guide us through.
This shift in focus allowed us to push back against a narrative that felt so pervasive in that space: that life would be less than, that heartbreak was inevitable, that we were without options or possibility. Now, we’re telling a new story.
Tell Me What’s Good. has inspired a number of cultural touchstones, from The Zev Project podcast, to various appearances on stages and in media, to an apparel line that offers these four words of changed perspective, wherever one might need them.
The 4those movement is modeled after this positive act of defiance.
We will not be afraid.
We will not give up.
We will not accept that life will be less than, or that a life with challenges is something we cannot handle.
We will face this bravely.
We will focus on possibilities while surrendering to what is.
We will remain hopeful for what is to come, no matter what it might be.
4those will offer families a place to live out the Tell Me What’s Good ethos in real life, fully embodying the promise contained within a future that lays ahead, illuminating all of the hope that can exist when we focus on all that is truly possible.