But if I could go back in time, I wouldn't do a single thing differently. What if all those things I did were the things that got me here?

Uncertain as I was as I pushed forward. I felt right in my pushing, as if the effort itself meant something.

My whole life sort of ended when my mom died.

The most important thing for aspiring writers is for them to give themselves permission to be brave on the page, to write in the presence of fear, to go to those places that you think you can’t write - really that’s exactly what you need to write.

What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

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

The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.