Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of my psychic damage, this worked to everyone's advantage.

'Help' is a prayer that is always answered.

All I know is that after 10 years of being sober, with huge support to express my pain and anger and shadow, the grief and tears didn’t wash me away. They gave me my life back! They cleansed me, baptized me, hydrated the earth at my feet. They brought me home, to me, to the truth of me.

I sat down in the sand, breathless with shame and failure. God, I thought, some defender of the weak. Some freedom fighter: Joan of Arc in sunscreen.

Good writing is about telling the truth.

No matter what circumstances, it's hard to be a parent and maintain a sense of self and identity in the world.