If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease. We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help.

I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me? The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one.

In your twenties you're becoming who you're going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole.

Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.

The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.

Believe in the integrity and value of the jagged path. We don't always do the right thing on our way to rightness.

Every time I set foot on that trail, I feel grateful for the PCTA for doing the work it does to protect and preserve it