Golden Connections: What Éliane Taught Me About Brightness, Gratitude, and the Wisdom Between

Éliane was my guest at the second edition of the C2 Montreal conference—an event that had, almost overnight, become a magnetic hub for creative and business leaders from all corners of the world. The program was dazzling. On the final day, Sir Richard Branson took the main stage for a dramatic crescendo. But for me, the real magic unfolded in the quieter currents—moments of genuine encounter, of eyes meeting across unfamiliar rooms, of minds and hearts being softly rewired.

The producers of C2 had invited me in as an advisor, tasked with coaching the delegate acquisition team. I brought fervor, and they noticed. They dubbed a handful of us “ambassadors,” a mix of connectors and curious conspirators who could each extend a few personal invitations. When I met Éliane, I had an immediate sense—this space will speak to her. And it did.

At the time, she was a professor at McGill’s Institute for the Study of International Development, with research anchored in innovation and sustainability. She also served on President Kagame’s advisory council in Rwanda, and that year, she chaired the International Leadership Association’s global conference, which was to be held in Montreal. Her orbit was wide and worldly—but what struck me most was her presence.

After Branson’s keynote, we found each other in the milling crowd. She was radiant. Her words of thanks were not the usual courteous nods I had grown used to in the business world. These were full-bodied. Warm. Sincere. The kind of thanks that makes you stop. That makes you feel seen.

She told me she had valued the in-between moments most—not just the speakers, but the liminal spaces, the random encounters with others whose values and visions resonated. “There are more of us than I realized,” she said. “But we’re scattered. Isolated. Jailed in our clusters. The work ahead is to find each other—and connect.”

That sentence rang like a bell in my chest.

Coming from a world where smiles and handshakes were often currency, her gratitude felt like something else entirely. A transmission. A call. Maybe—just maybe—men and women could show up for each other with care, curiosity, and no hidden scorekeeping. Maybe I could learn something from the study of gratitude.

Over the next few years, Éliane and I occasionally met for lunch. Our conversations circled poetry, spirituality, sustainability, and the aching, noble work of trying to become more human in a world so often set against that becoming. Most of the time, I was the one receiving. She had a gift—the sacred art of seeing people, and gently inviting them to rise into their own light.

She once read a text I had written and paused, her perceptive eyes scanning more than just the words. She pointed to the tone—the subtext. There was resentment there, she noted. Old, fermented anger toward men of the last century. Toward patriarchy. “Can you find forgiveness?” she asked gently. “Can you also find reasons for gratitude?”

She wasn’t asking me to forget, or to pacify. She was asking me to hold paradox. To listen deeply—to others, but also to the generational anger that moves through people like electricity. On feminism, she taught me that the work was not to speak, but first to listen. To weather the storm of long-held hurt without flinching.

Lesson: Compassion requires not resolution, but spaciousness.

She told me brightness was not a gift one receives but a reward—earned through attention, effort, and practice. Meditation. Prayer. Art. Dance. Walking with the Earth. She said I had good ideas, a gift for framing them. “You should write a book,” she offered, casually, as if stating a weather forecast.

I smiled. Nodded. Thanked her. But inside, the inner voice thundered: No way. That voice still speaks. But Éliane’s voice lingers louder.

When my partner, Ruhiya, received an offer to take a post in Cairo, I consulted Éliane like one might consult an oracle. “Go,” she said simply. We didn’t go to Cairo—the posting moved to Amman. But the impulse to seek her guidance remains one of my most trusted instincts.

Later, when I confided to her that I was struggling—missing my children, aching with the stretch of distance—she responded not with advice, but with an offering. She sent me a link to Dancing in the Flames, the documentary about Marion and Ross Woodman, and the sudden death of their beloved dog Sammy.

A story not of resolution, but of rupture, truth, and the cost of becoming.

It was her way of saying: Your ache is real. Transformation has a price. Keep walking anyway.

Next: Cardboard Wings: Finding Belonging in an Imagination Room

© 2025 Dominique Bel. Cardboard Wings: A Constellation of Becoming. All rights reserved.