When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a piece of yourself inside her, because sometimes that is what it takes to claim.

[I] don't think I was trying to kill myself. I just wanted to hurt, and understand exactly whay I was hurting. This made sense: you cut, you felt pain, period.

Do you remember the summer we signed you up for camp? And the night before you left, you said you've changed your mind and wanted to stay home? I told you to to get a seat on the left side of the bus, so when you pulled away, you'd be able to look back and see me there waiting for you." I press her hand against my cheek, hard enough to leave a mark. "You get that same seat in Heaven. One where you can watch me, watching you.

There was a fine line between love and hate you heard that cliche all the time. But no one told you that the moment you crossed it would be the one you least expected. You'd fall in love and crack open a secret door to let your soul mate in. You just never expected such closeness one day to feel like an intrusion.

Instead of plotting the demise of the traditional family, as some politicians and religious leaders would have you believe, gay people mow their lawns and watch 'American Idol' and video their children's concerts and have the same hopes and dreams that their straight counterparts do.

If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase-not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been-what would you take?

Music therapy, to me, is music performance without the ego. It's not about entertainment as much as its about empathizing. If you can use music to slip past the pain and gather insight into the workings of someone else's mind, you can begin to fix a problem.