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Founded by Robert Xavier Fogarty.
@robertxavierfogarty

“The night that changed my life happened unexpectedly.”

Our founding story as told by @rxfogarty

@teamgleason has always been a real one. Congrats on the Arthur Ashe award for courage you will receive tonight from the #espys. @espn
2011 / 2024

📸 @the.james.shaw for @dearworld

What an incredible day of connection. Thank you, @bonsecours, for exploring the power of storytelling and how shared values can strengthen the connection within your team.

What an incredible day of connection. Thank you, @bonsecours, for exploring the power of storytelling and how shared values can strengthen the connection within your team.

What an incredible day of connection. Thank you, @bonsecours, for exploring the power of storytelling and how shared values can strengthen the connection within your team.

Dear Enoughness,

I once photographed a woman named Mariana when she was a college student at St. John’s University.

When she was 11, she met her father for the first time.

They went to Disney World. For a little while, it looked like the story she had imagined might come true.

Then, when she was 14, he denied she was his daughter in court.

She took a DNA test to prove she was his.

A court may call that procedure. A lawyer may call it evidence. A file may call it documentation.

But Mariana heard something else:
I am not enough.

By 16, that sentence had followed her into hallways, mirrors, friendships, crushes, text messages, and the fragile architecture of teenage love.

So when a boy did not want to be with her, that was the catalyst, but it was not the whole story.

For the next two years, every mistake became evidence.

Every rejection became confirmation. Every wrong turn joined the case against her.

Then another sentence arrived like lightning:
Your dad is an irresponsible person who missed out on a great kid. This has nothing to do with you.
Something clicked.
His absence was not on her.

Years later, Mariana stood in front of her peers and told this story with her photo projected behind her.

I think about Mariana when I think about worthiness.

I think about the ache in my own chest, the one that once hurt so badly I thought it might never leave. I felt it while I grieved my brother, battled insecurity, and asked myself the private, humiliating question that finds nearly all of us eventually: Am I enough?

Viktor Frankl warned against measuring another person’s suffering from the outside. He compared suffering to gas in a chamber. No matter the size of the room, the gas expands until it fills the whole space.

Suffering behaves that way too. Whether the world calls the wound large or small, it can still fill the soul of the person carrying it.

Mariana is enough. So am I. So are you.

Sincerely,
RXF

P.S. This post was inspired by @blakemycoskie and his new show, No Magic Pill. Inspiring to hear him talk about success, worthiness, and his new project, We are Enough: @weareenough.

We grow on our own and changed through glorious laughs. Fail? It is so and whatever will be will be. But you are not broken. Remember that the deeper the roots the stronger your tree will be. So co-author your own destiny.

Photos from students at @utknoxville / @utkstudentlife

We grow on our own and changed through glorious laughs. Fail? It is so and whatever will be will be. But you are not broken. Remember that the deeper the roots the stronger your tree will be. So co-author your own destiny.

Photos from students at @utknoxville / @utkstudentlife

We grow on our own and changed through glorious laughs. Fail? It is so and whatever will be will be. But you are not broken. Remember that the deeper the roots the stronger your tree will be. So co-author your own destiny.

Photos from students at @utknoxville / @utkstudentlife

We grow on our own and changed through glorious laughs. Fail? It is so and whatever will be will be. But you are not broken. Remember that the deeper the roots the stronger your tree will be. So co-author your own destiny.

Photos from students at @utknoxville / @utkstudentlife

We grow on our own and changed through glorious laughs. Fail? It is so and whatever will be will be. But you are not broken. Remember that the deeper the roots the stronger your tree will be. So co-author your own destiny.

Photos from students at @utknoxville / @utkstudentlife

We grow on our own and changed through glorious laughs. Fail? It is so and whatever will be will be. But you are not broken. Remember that the deeper the roots the stronger your tree will be. So co-author your own destiny.

Photos from students at @utknoxville / @utkstudentlife

We grow on our own and changed through glorious laughs. Fail? It is so and whatever will be will be. But you are not broken. Remember that the deeper the roots the stronger your tree will be. So co-author your own destiny.

Photos from students at @utknoxville / @utkstudentlife

We grow on our own and changed through glorious laughs. Fail? It is so and whatever will be will be. But you are not broken. Remember that the deeper the roots the stronger your tree will be. So co-author your own destiny.

Photos from students at @utknoxville / @utkstudentlife

The world will write on you if you let it.
Ugly. Fat. Black. White. Mixed. Too much. Not enough.
But healing begins the moment you stop carrying every word as truth. You are not the names they gave you.

#DearWorld #ShapeYourStory

Dear Authenticity,

I get a text from my friend Ellyn. She’s at Pierre’s funeral.
It sends me back to the day I met Pierre Nanterme, the global CEO of Accenture until 2019.

Ellyn, who was CHRO of Accenture, had a big goal: reach 50/50 gender equality at the firm. She asked if I would help tell the stories of women across the company.

She also said, “I think I can get Pierre too.”

I fly to Paris, set up a video booth and wait.

He arrives.

I show him photos of my work. There is one of a little girl in a refugee camp. That’s the one he stops on. Not for long. Just enough.

I ask him what he might want to say about gender equality.

“I think I’ll talk about my daughter,” he says.

He beams about Marie, who is 15.

“She is probably the woman of my life. My relationship with my daughter is absolutely irrational. She is me, and she is not me. There is something extraordinarily special between us.
Gender equality is just the right thing to do.
To be even more specific, I feel extraordinarily compelled to make the world better for my daughter.”

Later, after we published the video, Pierre was asked why he shared so personally.

He said Ellyn told him, “You will have to trust me.”

Then he talked about the strangeness of the experience.
Taking off his shirt. Writing on his body. Letting a photographer he had just met ask him personal questions.

But then he said this:

“We talked first. He put me in the right mood. There was a feeling of confidence and trust. Slowly, he encouraged me to become more personal.
Then we moved into the video and the photograph, and I simply let my heart speak.
This is who we are. This is who we should be.
There is nothing wrong with being extraordinarily authentic.”

“You’re forever a part of his legacy,” Ellyn writes, along with a photo of the funeral program.

And I realize something.
That’s what his family chose.
His Dear World photo.

I wonder aloud now, what if someone had to pick one image of me?

How about you?

Would your message already exist?

What would it say?

Sincerely,

@robertxavierfogarty

Dear Authenticity,

I get a text from my friend Ellyn. She’s at Pierre’s funeral.
It sends me back to the day I met Pierre Nanterme, the global CEO of Accenture until 2019.

Ellyn, who was CHRO of Accenture, had a big goal: reach 50/50 gender equality at the firm. She asked if I would help tell the stories of women across the company.

She also said, “I think I can get Pierre too.”

I fly to Paris, set up a video booth and wait.

He arrives.

I show him photos of my work. There is one of a little girl in a refugee camp. That’s the one he stops on. Not for long. Just enough.

I ask him what he might want to say about gender equality.

“I think I’ll talk about my daughter,” he says.

He beams about Marie, who is 15.

“She is probably the woman of my life. My relationship with my daughter is absolutely irrational. She is me, and she is not me. There is something extraordinarily special between us.
Gender equality is just the right thing to do.
To be even more specific, I feel extraordinarily compelled to make the world better for my daughter.”

Later, after we published the video, Pierre was asked why he shared so personally.

He said Ellyn told him, “You will have to trust me.”

Then he talked about the strangeness of the experience.
Taking off his shirt. Writing on his body. Letting a photographer he had just met ask him personal questions.

But then he said this:

“We talked first. He put me in the right mood. There was a feeling of confidence and trust. Slowly, he encouraged me to become more personal.
Then we moved into the video and the photograph, and I simply let my heart speak.
This is who we are. This is who we should be.
There is nothing wrong with being extraordinarily authentic.”

“You’re forever a part of his legacy,” Ellyn writes, along with a photo of the funeral program.

And I realize something.
That’s what his family chose.
His Dear World photo.

I wonder aloud now, what if someone had to pick one image of me?

How about you?

Would your message already exist?

What would it say?

Sincerely,

@robertxavierfogarty

“If it has meaning to you, it has meaning to us.”

My wife is from Brazil, and our baby will be here soon. She will be a mix of Brazil and America, from São Paulo to Omaha, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Helena, Montana.

@nubia_azevedo is definitely “Made in Brazil.”

Dear world baby coming in July!

Love,
RXF

Amazing event in Orlando for a special pharmaceutical client, over 1,000 attendees and an unforgettable experience. The finale stories moved the crowd to laugh, think and cry.

Amazing event in Orlando for a special pharmaceutical client, over 1,000 attendees and an unforgettable experience. The finale stories moved the crowd to laugh, think and cry.

Amazing event in Orlando for a special pharmaceutical client, over 1,000 attendees and an unforgettable experience. The finale stories moved the crowd to laugh, think and cry.

…This is the picture I was referencing in my last reel.

✨ and the moment I realized my worth wasn’t something other people could give me… it was something I had to build, live out, and have ALWAYS proved to myself.

By showing up, doing the hard things, and refusing to quit, I found confidence I never knew I had.

@dearworld

#MindsetReset #BelieveInYourself #Confidence #SelfWorth #DoItAndProveIt

Dear Judgement,
I am at a fancy event in New York City. It has table settings, floral centerpieces, and an open bar.
Another photographer I don’t know, the one taking candids of guests—is talking, and his voice sounds slurred.
“I can’t believe he’s drunk,” I think.
Oh, Judgment, how right I thought I was.
How dare he?

It’s the end of the night and we’re packing up.
I feel a tap on my shoulder and hear a slow, slurred voice. It’s the “drunk” photographer.
“I just wanted to introduce myself,” he says. “I love your photograph of Steve Gleason.”

Judgment, if you don’t know, Steve Gleason is a famous football player now living with ALS. I took a somewhat famous Dear World photo of him with “No White Flags” written on his arm.

“Sorry,” the man says with a slur, “would you take my picture? I have ALS too. I love the photograph you took of Steve Gleason. He’s a big inspiration in my life.”

Judgment, vocal cords weaken in ALS patients, making people—you guessed it—sound drunk.

Maybe it’s the sheer guilt, shame, and embarrassment washing over me, but I shower him with love. I hug him longer than strangers hug, and all I can think is what an absolute jerk I am.

He tells me he’s raised tens of thousands of dollars for ALS by selling pickles.

“PickALS,” he says. “Get it?”

Sincerely,
RXF

Dear Judgement,
I am at a fancy event in New York City. It has table settings, floral centerpieces, and an open bar.
Another photographer I don’t know, the one taking candids of guests—is talking, and his voice sounds slurred.
“I can’t believe he’s drunk,” I think.
Oh, Judgment, how right I thought I was.
How dare he?

It’s the end of the night and we’re packing up.
I feel a tap on my shoulder and hear a slow, slurred voice. It’s the “drunk” photographer.
“I just wanted to introduce myself,” he says. “I love your photograph of Steve Gleason.”

Judgment, if you don’t know, Steve Gleason is a famous football player now living with ALS. I took a somewhat famous Dear World photo of him with “No White Flags” written on his arm.

“Sorry,” the man says with a slur, “would you take my picture? I have ALS too. I love the photograph you took of Steve Gleason. He’s a big inspiration in my life.”

Judgment, vocal cords weaken in ALS patients, making people—you guessed it—sound drunk.

Maybe it’s the sheer guilt, shame, and embarrassment washing over me, but I shower him with love. I hug him longer than strangers hug, and all I can think is what an absolute jerk I am.

He tells me he’s raised tens of thousands of dollars for ALS by selling pickles.

“PickALS,” he says. “Get it?”

Sincerely,
RXF