I had problems a therapist couldn't solve; grief that no man in a room could ameliorate.

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life. Say thank you.

Can I convince the person about whom I'm crazy to be crazy about me? The short answer is no. The long answer is no.

I had to go on without my mother, even though I was suffering terribly, grieving her.

Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to doI don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do.

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

I write to find what I have to say. I edit to figure out how to say it right.