Stephen Bigelow, PhD - Education Leadership

I have been back in Brazil for almost a week now, and the kindness people have shown has been extraordinary. The messages, conversations, and gestures of support have meant more to me than I can fully express. But in many ways, I’m not surprised. That has been my experience with Brazil from the very beginning. It is a place where people lead with warmth and generosity. Brazil has also been a place of enormous change and growth for me. When I first came here, it was always with the assumption that my wife, Kristin, would eventually be living here with me. That was part of the story we were writing together. Life, of course, sometimes rewrites the story. Kristin and I started dating when I was a junior at the University of Michigan. She was a senior, "the older woman". We were engaged during my senior year and married when I was just 22 years old. I am now 50, and our daughter is following our footsteps by studying at UofM. And now, for the first time in my adult life, I find m...