Why Some People Feel Bigger than Others by Katherine Rose

 My friend and mentor Sean Stephenson had a condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta, which is also known as brittle bone disease. Sean’s condition was severe, and one of the results was that he wasn’t much taller than a preschooler.

And yet, Sean was the tallest three-foot person I have ever met. Although he sat in a wheelchair, his effect on people seemed taller than Shaquille O'Neal.

Sean had been in and out of the hospital more times than he could count. He died on August 28, 2019.

I was lucky to have known Sean. Though he touched hundreds of thousands of lives, most people did not know him. I feel fortunate that I did, and I remind myself that there was once a time when I did not, and I am better off for the brief encounter I had with Sean.

His legacy will remain, and I encourage all of you to watch the videos Sean left behind—on his website, his Facebook page, and on YouTube.

Sean’s death came a little more than four years after my brother, Jonny, died. After Jonny died, I realized how many layers there were to him—layers that I never got to see. In the days and weeks after Jonny’s death, we heard so many stories about him, and they surprised us because other people saw sides of him that we did not know. This led my dad and me to the conclusion that you can only really know ten or fifteen percent of a person.

But Sean’s death made me realize that maybe we were not totally accurate.

 Unlike my brother, Sean wore his vulnerabilities right out front. He had no choice. Everyone could see them. People were curious about him, how he lived, what his daily life was like.

And Sean laid it all out there. He answered their questions. He addressed what everyone could see.

But once this was addressed, something remarkable happened. We were able to see more of Sean. His vulnerabilities just stopped mattering, and we saw his power and wisdom. We learned from his resilience, and we made ourselves better people because of it. We didn’t see someone small; we saw someone larger than life.

Since Sean’s death, I have been thinking about vulnerability. If a person is vulnerable, if they wear it all on their sleeve, maybe we can know more of them. Maybe if they stop trying to hide their vulnerabilities and insecurities, we can stop looking for their flaws. We can stop worrying about the things we cannot see, and we can focus on who they are. We can find their power and wisdom so that their vulnerabilities just stop mattering.

We all spend so much time hiding our flaws. We hide the holes in our knowledge. We hide our insecurities. We hide our mistakes and hope no one finds out. We spend so much energy on what we do not want to show the world, and it eats away at the energy we have for what we do want to show the world.

But when we pour out our vulnerabilities, there is no more energy necessary, and we can get to all the rest.

I was sent to meet Sean because I struggled with continuing my life after Jonny died. Because he so readily showed me his vulnerabilities, I could show him mine.

I did not know him for long, certainly not as long as I knew Jonny. And I was not someone in Sean’s inner circle, but I’m thinking maybe I understood the essence of who he was. I think he gave us more than ten or fifteen percent. He just felt bigger than most people.

I think Sean saw who I was, too. It was a full circle.

And it was a full circle in more ways than one. Sean died on what would have been Jonny’s 33rd birthday.