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“Only when we realize that our time is limited do we begin to appreciate the value of every single day.” ~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross I didn’t expect the trip to begin the way it did. In December 2003, I decided to take a holiday over Christmas. I booked an eco-tour of Sri Lanka, traveling around the country…

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” ~Søren Kierkegaard A few years ago, I was catching up over coffee with an old friend I’ll call Ray, a trusted mentor. He’s a few years older than me, silver-haired and down to earth, the kind of man who listens with his whole…

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” ~Oprah Winfrey My father died at forty-nine. I was young when it happened, still soft in the way grief makes you when you are not yet equipped to hold it. I was so consumed by the loss itself that I never…

“Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.” ~Doug Larson I don’t miss Zinia. I miss the Zinia I made up. The real Zinia—the one who fought with me for hours over things that became bigger than they should have, who said things I told myself I’d never forgive,…

“Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears.” ~Pema Chödrön Evicted. The word stared up at me from the letter in my hands. It was the summer of 2022, near the tail end of the Covid…

“When we avoid difficult conversations, we trade short-term discomfort for long-term dysfunction.” ~Peter Bromberg Have you ever looked around at other people’s lives and wondered, “How do they do that?” How do they seem so steady, so connected, so… together? From where I stood, there appeared to be a certain kind of person—someone confident, kind,…

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” ~Hermann Hesse My dad was intubated, so he couldn’t say the words back to me. I told him I loved him anyway. Instead, he slowly pointed to himself and then to me. “You love me too?” I asked. His eyes…

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” ~Anne Lamott You know that familiar routine: an exhausting day at work, a long commute, children, errands, messages, dinner, and notifications. And then—finally—rest at the end of it all. A soft, welcoming couch that curves in all the right places.…

“It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day, that’s the hard part.” ~ BoJack Horseman If you’d told eighteen-year-old me where she’d be at twenty-eight, she would have laughed nervously and changed the subject. That was her move, by the way. Laugh it off. Deflect. Eat…

“Love life more than the meaning of it? Yes, certainly.” ~Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov When I was a child, there was a special moment during dusk when the old sodium lanterns switched on in the streets, morphing the world from one of saturation into one of yellow monochrome, and it always made me sad. One…