You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories.

Being a parent is absolutely exhausting and draining, along with all the joy and love.

When I was a kid, our family used to watch 'Bonanza.' I really liked having a Sunday night TV ritual.

Sometimes grace works like water wings when you feel you are sinking.

You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.

How do you begin? The answer is simple: you decide to.

I write everything as a wake-up call to myself and others, to anyone who may have gotten tired of hitting the snooze button.