If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me.

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.

My high school guidance counselor, Mrs. Inverholl, once had me take an aptitude test to figure out my future. The number one job recommendation for my set of skills was an air traffic accident investigator, of which there are fewer than fifty in the world. The number two job was a museum curator for Chinese-American studies. The number three job was a circus clown.

When you’re hurting deeply, you go inward.

You are only as invincible as your smallest weakness, and those are tiny indeed - the length of a sleeping baby's eyelash, the span of a child's hand. Life turns on a dime, and - it turns out - so does one's conscience.

Many trees have died so that the Catholic Church can preach against homosexuality.

I have always written about subjects that engage me - questions I can't answer myself. They apparently tend to be big moral and ethical issues!