Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.

hat whole phrase, "daring greatly," is from the Theodore Roosevelt quote that goes back to your original question of, what about the critics? And when I read his quote it was life-changing. "It's not the critic who counts; it's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done the better.

To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else's hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that "I'm only human" does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.

Until we can receive with an open heart, we're never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.

It was scary. But it was so liberating. I thought, This is not predetermined - I get to choose. There are some days where I have to choose five times in a day. I had to make a choice when you called and the phone rang, whether I'm going to show up and be me, or whether I'm going to say what I think I'm supposed to say and get off the phone.

Let go of who you think you should be in order to be who you are. Be imperfect and have compassion for yourself. Connection is the result of authenticity.

We are a culture of people who've bought into the idea that if we stay busy enough, the truth of our lives won't catch up with us.