I recently spent several days in Tennessee and Texas with the public relations manager of one of Rose Communications’ clients, a leading healthcare delivery company. Our trip had multiple purposes, a few of which included attending a local event in Nashville we had helped plan and promote; kicking off a series of interviews with one of the company’s executives to inform a foundational branding platform; conducting media training with Texas market executives; and gathering information for a strategy to address a regional communications challenge.

The trip was satisfying and eventful. For a company such as this one that serves people in several areas of the country, nothing compares to being “on the ground.” The PR manager and I were able to meet with the people instrumental in working on critical issues relevant to the lives of members in those markets.

I appreciated hearing directly from a variety of executives and staff members about their communications needs. I was also pleased to have the opportunity to introduce myself as a resource for them to tap as they work to convey messages to their diverse audiences.

Being there also gave me unique insights into the audiences we were trying to reach. If I hadn’t traveled to the various communities, my perception of the lifestyle and quality of life would not have been as accurate. I wouldn’t, for example, know what an assisted living facility looks, feels or smells like. I wouldn’t understand the barriers people there face every day when they don’t speak or read English, or can’t read at all.

I came back to work enlightened and energized. The experience reinforced for me the immense value of human-to-human interaction and cultural immersion in gaining the nuanced insights I need to do my job well. Obvious, perhaps, but important to remember in this age of technologically powered communications.

When we depend too much on smartphones and emails, sometimes the very things we need to know can get lost in translation.

One year ago this November, my teenage daughter was misdiagnosed with medulloblastoma – a devastating, potentially terminal type of brain cancer. The hours before the true, much less serious diagnosis was discovered were some of the most excruciating I’ve ever had to live through.

She had been feeling dizzy, and then started to develop vision problems. When she stumbled down the stairs in our home, I knew something was very wrong. I took her to the pediatrician, who ordered a CT scan. As we came back home and walked through the door afterward, the phone was ringing.

It was the doctor saying my daughter had a highly malignant brain tumor.

My world was turned inside out as the doctor calmly yet firmly gave me instructions: tell your daughter the news right now, call your husband at work and tell him to come home as quickly as possible, and then go immediately to the pediatric emergency room at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Tonight. I hung up the phone and sank to my knees.

At that moment, something inside me gave way and separated from me, lost forever. I knew that the life I knew before was gone and that my life from that point on would be spent fighting for my daughter’s life and, perhaps, coming to terms with her death. The feeling was visceral; a mother’s ultimate pain.

Since that autumn evening, I’ve thought a lot about the power of communication and how a few words can alter our perceptions – of others, ourselves and even life itself. Words, language and thoughts can change the world. They can lift up and they can destroy.

Nothing takes away the life-altering feeling of being told your child will probably die soon. Although my reality is mercifully much different than the nightmare I thought it would be (my daughter has a venous cavernous malformation or cavernoma that bled and caused her symptoms), I am changed, and the way I hear, process and convey information is different. I’m more careful in my word choices, and more skeptical of information I receive.

What have you experienced that prompted you to ponder the awesome — and sometimes awful — power of words?