I think being a woman alone enhanced the impulse in others to be generous. What we're told is that to be a woman alone is to be in a dangerous situation. The message is that people are gong to prey on you and do bad things to you. That may be true in some cases, but what I experienced was the other case.

Obviously memoir is subjective truth: It is my memory, my perspective, that's the beauty. But I still wanted to be as factual as I could.

You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.

It's hard to go. It's scary and lonely...and half the time you'll be wondering why the hell you're in Cincinnati or Austin or North Dakota or Mongolia or wherever your melodious little finger-plucking heinie takes you. There will be boondoggles and discombobulated days, freaked-out nights and metaphorical flat tires. But it will be soul-smashingly beautiful... It will open up your life.

I’m a free spirit who never had the balls to be free.

Don't worry. Don't apologize. Don't cower behind the defeated security of there is no 'room for someone like me'. There isn't room for any one of us. It's up to you to make a place for yourself in the world. So get to work.

Run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.