When I was growing up, I had no idea that I could possibly become a writer. I wrote endlessly in journals - a practice I maintained for a long time, well into the writing life I had no idea I could ever have.

I had spent my childhood and the better part of my early adulthood trying to understand my mother. She had been an extraordinarily difficult person, spiteful and full of rage, with a temper that could flare, seemingly out of nowhere, scorching everything and everyone who got in its way. [pp. 40-41]

In my life as a wife and mother, I'm always conscious of my desire to be present.

I'm most connected to myself when I'm alone in a room, moving my hand across a page. That's when I feel most like me.

At some point each day (well, most days) I unroll my mat and practice for an hour. I sit in meditation for a while. This can be five minutes or twenty minutes, but the daily practice - simply showing up for it - is centering.

My son is now fourteen, and from the moment he was born, I understood that forevermore my heart would be walking around outside my body.

What was going on inside of me became louder because everything around me became quieter.