It isn’t about being at the same school or the same town or even the same room. It’s about being together. Love is a choice you make.

I can be a little OCD when it comes to my writing.

what shall we drink to?" "How about family?" Stacy said, showing up just in time to pour a fourth shot. "To those who are here, those who are gone, and those who are lost." and she clicked glasses with mom

Whenever I write about motherhood - and I write about it a lot - I am drawing on my experiences as a mother and also my experiences as a daughter.

You will always miss her. There will be days - even years from now - when the missing will be so sharp it will take your breath away. But there will be good days, too, months and years of them. In one way or another you'll be searching for her all your life.

Before this trip and all that she'd learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it.

And no one drank just one shot of tequila.