The Difference We Make

Jane Goodall died this week, and I found myself feeling the deep impact of someone who had quietly shaped me for so many years leaving the planet.

It feels almost impossible to believe she is gone.

I started watching and following Jane’s work when I was around ten years old. Along with my younger brother, Mark, I would spend hours in the viewing booths at the community college library near our home in Florida, headphones on, mesmerized by her gentle voice and her patient communion with the chimpanzees.

At the time, I had no idea how much those afternoons would influence me. I only knew that when I listened to Jane, something inside me settled. Her voice carried me somewhere beyond the walls of that library and beyond the challenges of being a young girl trying to find her place in a world that suddenly felt unfamiliar.

A Girl Far From Home

We moved to Florida from New York the summer I turned eight.

I was born and raised in Baldwin, a harbor town on Long Island. Being the eighth of nine children, living a few blocks from the water, and spending my days exploring Pacific Street felt idyllic to me. It was a childhood filled with both chaos and wonder. There were always siblings, cousins, neighbors, and adventures waiting just beyond the front door.

When my family moved south, my young explorer’s heart initially saw it as another adventure.

But reality arrived quickly.

We were suddenly far from family, friends, and everything familiar. The world I knew disappeared almost overnight. What had once felt expansive became small and lonely. I missed the harbor. I missed my cousins. I missed the feeling of belonging to a place.

Life on Metzger Road was different—hot, quiet, and strange.

Looking back, I realize that part of what I was grieving wasn’t simply a location. I was grieving the loss of a world that had helped shape me. I was learning, for the first time, what it meant to leave something behind.

The Sister Who Opened the Door

As I reflected on Jane’s passing, I found myself thinking about how I was first introduced to her work.

That gift came from my sister, Taffy.

Taffy is almost ten years older than I am, and my earliest memories of her are filled with warmth, generosity, and laughter. She had a way of making ordinary moments feel special. She could turn helping clean the house into an event simply by promising English muffin pizzas afterward.

When I was ten years old, Taffy was attending nursing school and pregnant with her first child. Life must have been incredibly busy. Yet somehow she still found room for us.

One sweltering afternoon in our little house with no air conditioning, she announced that Mark and I were coming with her to the community college while she studied.

What seemed like a simple decision became one of those moments that quietly change a life.

She showed us how to use the library’s viewing booths. She introduced us to the films. She placed Jane Goodall into our world and then trusted us to explore.

Soon, we knew exactly where to go.

We would slip into those booths like young adventurers returning to camp, eager for the next journey. While Taffy studied nursing, Jane carried us to the forests of Gombe.

Neither woman could have known the impact they were having.

Discovering Africa From a Library Booth

One of the ways I learned to feed that lost inner explorer was through Jane.

Her calm, melodic narration and her stories of compassion, observation, and trust offered me something I didn’t always know how to find at home: peace.

Mark and I would sit together, captivated as Jane forged relationships with the chimpanzees. She didn’t study them from a distance. She entered into a relationship with them. She learned their personalities, habits, joys, and griefs.

There was something revolutionary in that.

Jane taught us that understanding begins with paying attention. That connection begins with curiosity. That compassion is not weakness but a form of strength.

Long before I had words for it, she was teaching me that empathy is the bridge to every living thing.

The Return of Wonder

Through Taffy, I met Jane Goodall.

And through Jane, I rediscovered wonder.

Years later, as an adult navigating grief, loss, trauma, healing, and all the complexity that comes with being human, I would return to Jane’s teachings again and again.

One of my favorite books is The Book of Hope.

The line that has stayed with me most is:

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

It is such a simple statement.

And yet it asks one of the most important questions we can ever consider.

What kind of difference do we want to make?

Not what kind of success.

Not what kind of recognition.

Not what kind of achievement.

What kind of difference?

Jane answered that question with her life.

The Ripple Effect of Kindness

What strikes me most as I reflect on both Jane and Taffy is how neither of them were trying to create a defining moment for me.

Jane was simply doing the work she felt called to do.

Taffy was simply caring for her younger siblings while balancing the demands of nursing school and impending motherhood.

Neither act seemed extraordinary at the time.

Yet both changed me.

Their combined influence reminds me that legacy isn’t built solely through grand accomplishments. More often, it is built through small moments of presence, generosity, and care that ripple outward in ways we may never fully understand.

A scientist in Africa studies chimpanzees.

A young woman takes her brother and sister to a library.

A little girl discovers wonder.

Decades later, she remembers.

That is how legacy works.

The Difference I Want to Make

As I sit with the news of Jane’s passing, I feel that familiar ache that arrives whenever someone who helped shape the world takes their final bow.

Yet her spirit feels very much alive.

I see her influence in the way I move through my own work. In the pauses I take to listen deeply. In the stories I help people tell. In the belief that every life matters and every voice deserves to be heard.

Jane taught me that changing the world doesn’t always require loudness.

Sometimes it begins with paying attention.

Sometimes it begins with curiosity.

Sometimes it begins with kindness.

And Taffy showed me what that looks like in everyday life. A sister who, even in the middle of her own challenges, made space for two little kids to discover something that would stay with them forever.

So, as I honor Jane Goodall this week, I also honor Taffy—and every woman who has quietly altered the course of another person’s life.

The explorers.

The nurturers.

The teachers.

The women who leave behind trails of light for the rest of us to follow.

In their reflection, I am reminded of the kind of difference I want to make.

And perhaps that is the truest tribute I can offer.

Roars of Love,

Jennifer