I was not raised with religion, and I had no faith before my mother died. On the other hand, when she died, I did not immediately feel she was "gone." I don't believe she is in something like heaven, but I also feel that we don't understand much about the nature of the universe. So I hold on to that uncertainty, at times.

But when my mother died, I found that I did not believe that she was gone.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death, because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.

Time doesn’t obey our commands. You cannot make it holy just because it is disappearing.

What's endlessly complicated in thinking about women's gymnastics is the way that vulnerability and power are threaded through the sport.

Sometimes you don't even know what you want until you find out you can't have it.

Writing has always been the primary way I make sense of the world.