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

One of the ideas I've clung to most of my life is that if I just try hard enough it will work out.

Many grievers experience intense yearning or longing after a death - more than they experience, say, denial.

One of the grubby truths about a loss is that you don't just mourn the dead person, you mourn the person you got to be when the lost one was alive. This loss might even be what affects you the most.

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

A mother is a story with no beginning. That is what defines her.

Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.