Jesse Stone Reeck ’05 delivered a SEVEN Talk at the 2025 Alumni Forum in Chapel Hill on October 18. Jesse is the executive director of Northland Pioneer College Friends and Family scholarship foundation and a 2023 Morehead-Cain Impact Educator.
Jesse Stone Reeck ’05delivered a SEVEN Talk at the 2025 Alumni Forum in Chapel Hill on October 18. Jesse is the executive director of Northland Pioneer College Friends and Family scholarship foundation and a 2023 Morehead-Cain Impact Educator.
About SEVEN Talks
Every class of Morehead-Cain Scholars connects with seven others: the three classes ahead, its own, and the three that follow. The idea of SEVEN is to strengthen connections across generations of Morehead-Cains.
The Alumni Forum embodies this spirit through SEVEN Talks—seven alumni and scholars on Saturday, and seven more on Sunday—each sharing seven minutes of wisdom with the Morehead-Cain community.
How to listen
On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on social media @moreheadcain or you can email us at communications@moreheadcain.org.
I just want to sing for you. I just want to sing for me. I just want to sing for everybody in this whole wide world. I just want to work for you And I just want to work for me. I just want to work for everybody in this whole wide world. Because we’re all in this thing together, Sitting here talking about the weather. It ain’t easy to feel the way we do, But it’s easy loving you.
I’m walking down a dusty road in a foreign city, and here they come from alleys and trash heaps—flocks of orphaned street boys in straps of torn clothing. One hand extended: “Mzungu, mzungu, pesa, pesa.” The other fiercely gripping a discarded, crusty bottle of glue, raised repeatedly to sniff.
It’s my sophomore summer in Naivasha, Kenya, and the axis starts to tilt.
A month later, here I am, back at Carolina, headed to the foundation to pick up my check. And I walk out onto the manicured lawns and collapse and stare at the thousands of dollars in my hands as the edges go blurry and tears run down my face.
It took me four months to build up the conviction and courage to ask for what I needed. I needed to leave, to try to wrap my head around what I was doing here at this school, on this planet. How do we, any of us, stay grounded and going when the world gets too overwhelming and the roadmap stops making sense?
So just before Christmas, I pulled on my big-girl panties and walked into Chuck’s office, and I said, “I would like to take a year off.” Now, you all do this gap-year thing like it is blasé, right? But for me and for the foundation then, it was a big risk.
I spent the year in Suriname in South America, working as a nanny. And every night, I wrangled four kids into PJs and through teeth brushing and face washing and pulled out a borrowed guitar and stumbled through beginner chords, trying to sing these kids to sleep with the same songs my dad used to sing to me. And I came back to Carolina, ready and a little bit more whole.
Two summers later, I’m in Kolkata with the Sisters of Charity, and every morning I show up. I’m handed a cup of tea, a slice of bread, and an assignment: “Wash these dishes. Serve this food. Hold her hand. Help him walk.” In the face of overwhelming odds, we do Mother Teresa’s small things with great love. We do the best we can to love the person right in front of us.
I just want to see my friends. I just want to say hello. I just want to sit right down together, listen to the radio or a cassette. I just want to tune right in. I just want to listen true. I just want to understand the other and their point of view.
I’m walking up a dirt road to a rundown trailer, dogs barking at the windows in the mountains, not far from my house in Arizona. My arms are weighed down with all the toys and clothes we’ve accumulated over eighteen months of life with our three-year-old foster daughter, dropping her off at her bio-parents’ for the last time. And I wave goodbye and barely make it back to the van before losing it.
Most reunifications that fall apart do so in the first six months. So we wait that six months, jumping at every phone call. And then I start deleting photos, throwing away mementos, closing out our foster license. I could not go through that again.
Ten months after that drop-off, she came back, along with two of her siblings. It still took a year and a half of back-and-forth before the adoption was finalized, and that back-and-forth left scars on all of us.
There are still plenty of days where I am barely holding it together in the van. One night, we all cringe and shrink, trying to make it home as she rages. She is shouting, ripping her clothes off, scratching her arms bloody, shouting how she hates us, she hates herself, she wants to die. She is six years old.
I’m in the front seat, so she can’t see my tears. And then what can we do but the next small thing: hold her, remind her that we love her no matter what, find a therapist? Many days, it doesn’t feel like nearly enough.
All this hurt in the world, especially now—maybe always. My friend who wrote this song I’m sharing with you all, he died by suicide last April. He was a remarkable person, full of light and love, and he came unmoored in the face of this world. Couldn’t we all?
Today, I work at a different scholarship foundation, and I write the checks—twenty-five dollars gas money for a student to get from their hometown on the Navajo Nation to the closest GED testing center. Insignificant to so many of us, life-changing for others. It is a small thing, and it is a great thing. When the axis tilts and chaos looms, it is one way I can try to love the person right in front of me.
One day we’re going to leave this path. We’re going to go out and explore. One day we’re going to leave this place. We’re going to walk right out that door. So take my hand, I’ll go with you. Let’s go and see the world ‘cause we’re all in this thing together, Sitting here talking ‘bout the weather. It ain’t easy to feel the way we do, But it’s easy loving you.