There is always tension in women's gymnastics between athleticism, grace, performance, and eros.

Like my mother before me, I have always been a good speller.

I am the indoctrinated child of two lapsed Irish Catholics. Which is to say: I am not religious.

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

My theory is this: Women falter when they're called on to be highly self-conscious about their talents. Not when they're called on to enact them.

There are many kinds of loss embedded in a loss - the loss of the person, and the loss of the self you got to be with that person. And the seeming loss of the past, which now feels forever out of reach.

When my mother was sick, I found myself needing to put down in my journals all sorts of things - to try to understand them, and, I think, to try to remember them.