There’s a great expression in Twelve Step programs: Act as if. Act as if you’re a writer. Sit down and begin. Act as if you might just create something beautiful, and by beautiful I mean something authentic and universal. Don’t wait for anybody to tell you it’s okay. Take that shimmer and show us our humanity. That’s your job.

It is only with distance that we are able to turn our powers of observation on ourselves, thus fashioning stories in which we are characters.

Recognize the possibility of the divine in any given moment.

Part of my spiritual work is learning to live with the knowledge that we can't protect our loved ones from pain and heartache.

I remember getting my first cell phone in New York, getting into a taxi and thinking "This is the end of solitude in the back of a taxi." What used to happen in the back of a taxi? You looked out the window. My brain has become less able to spend lengths of time without shifting, and I worry about that.

Those memories that are engraved within me become teaching tools, ways of connecting with others, of creating an empathic bridge, of reaching out a hand and saying, I've been there, too.

We are tyrannized by our options.