My mother's death put me in touch with my most savage self. As I've grown up and come to terms with her death and accepted it, the pieces of her that I keep don't exist materially.

Work hard. Do good. Be incredible!

Be brave enough to break your own heart.

You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself.

Aside from marrying my husband and having my children, hiking the PCT was the best thing I ever did. The hike very literally forced me to put one foot in front of the other at a time when emotionally I didn't think I could do that.

The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you're talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be overestimated.

I set my toothbrush down, then leaned into the mirror and stared into my own eyes. I could feel myself disintegrating inside myself like a past-bloom flower in the wind. Every time I moved a muscle, another petal of me blew away. Please, I thought. Please.