And if you're gonna be a writer, you just truly have to be a writer. You have to throw yourself into it and deal with the negative consequences of that. And there are negative consequences. I mean, there are. But, it's also true that you wouldn't be interviewing me right now if I had worked at the post office. You wouldn't. I would be still writing, but I wouldn't have gotten as far as I've gotten, because I wouldn't have had the time.

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.

I was trying to find a new home in the world.

But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first.

How wild it was, to let it be.

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 taught workshops at universities. I wrote for magazines. This took time and insane amounts of juggling, but it's how I earned a living.