There's only one problem with the hero's journey, it never included women.

Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship - a play between divine grace and willful self-effort.

At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.

The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?

If I'd had any way of knowing that things were- as Lily Tomlin once said- going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse, I'm not sure how I would have slept that night.

When you have only two minutes to say good-bye to the person you love most in the world, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again, you can become logjammed with the effort to say and do and settle everything at once.

Don't be afraid. Don't be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be.