If you want to end your isolation, you must be honest about what you want at a core level and decide to go after it.

Silence comes in two varieties: One that nourishes and comforts; another that chokes, smothers, and isolates. Solitary confinement is the worst kind of imprisonment we can inflict on fellow humans, and if you are forced to keep silent about some dark secret, you live in solitary confinement. Without the bridge of communication connecting you to other human beings, you can’t share your burdens, can’t receive comfort, can’t confirm that you still belong. Silence is the abyss that separates you from hope.

Try seeing your world and yourself this way, eyes open to whatever is before you, mind free of dichotomies. Are you good or bad, fragile or tough, wise or foolish? Yes. And so am I.

To care for someone can mean to adore them, feed them, tend their wounds. But care can also signify sorrow, as in "bowed down by cares." Or anxiety, as in "Careful!" Or investment in an outcome, as in "Who cares?" The word love has no such range of meaning: It's pure acceptance.

I have come to believe that there are infinite passageways out of the shadows, infinite vehicles to transport us into the light.

Don’t hide love. If you feel it, express it-not to demand that others love you back, but simply to live outwardly the best of what you feel inwardly. The worst that can happen to your heart is not rejection by another person but failure to act on the love you feel.

Your relationship is not supposed to be perfect all the time, your business is not supposed to do well all the time, your soufflés are not supposed to raise perfectly all the time. Everything is designed to go wrong so that you can gain the skills of rediscovering your tracks, even in difficult or frightening circumstances. Especially in difficult and frightening circumstances.