Summer nearly does me in every year. It's too hot and the light is unforgiving and the days go on way too long.

But easy's like, who cares? Easy's like, how much is easy going to get you?

Good therapy helps. Good friends help. Pretending that we are doing better than we are doesn't. Shame doesn't. Being heard does.

If you are hoping to find your self-worth and fulfillment in other peoples' opinion of your writing, you will never find it.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.

Frequently, as so many poets and psalmists and songwriters have said, the invisible shift happens through the broken places.

I've given guys blow jobs just because I've run out of things to talk about.' Oh, Rae. Who hasn't