...the other half of rising—the very half that makes rising necessary—is having been nailed to the cross.

We are savages insides. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed. There isn't a person reading this who hasn't at one point or another had that why not me? voice pop into the interior mix when something good has happened to someone else.

In my perception, the world wasn't a graph or formula or an equation. It was a story.

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.

Wanting to leave is enough.

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

I remember being absolutely rocked to my core by how profoundly I could love another human being.