Don't you wish we could pick the people we love?" "Yeah," I say. "Or just make the people we love want the same things we want.

I try to recognize that there is no such thing as having it all - and it's impossible to be perfect. You just have to let certain things go.

As everyone applauds and sips champagne, I smile back at Rachel, thinking she got it just right. Love and friendship. They are what makes us who we are and what can change us, if we let them.

Maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.

I will find the good in this loss. I will make something happen that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

A son is a son 'til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life.

Whenever you make a big decision in life, at least any decision where you have a viable alternative, there is an inevitable uneasy aftermath. Anxiety is merely a sign that you're taking something seriously.