Have a conversation with your family about your end-of-life wishes while you are healthy. No one wants to have that discussion... but if you do, you'll be giving your loved ones a tremendous gift, since they won't have to guess what your wishes would have been, and it takes the onus of responsibility off of them.

We all have things that come back to haunt us. Some of us just see them more clearly than others.

Missed opportunities were never superficial wounds; they cut straight to the bone.

They say that there are moments that open up your life like a walnut cracked, that change your point of view so that you never look at things the same way again.

My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

I've always sort of wondered: If everyone else's opinion is what matters, then do you ever really have one of your own?

If you've lived through it, you already know there are no words that will ever come close to describing it, and if you didn't - you will never understand.