It was as familiar to me as a song I'd been hearing my whole life, covered by various people but the basic tune the same.

Because anyone that can make you feel that bad about yourself is toxic.

Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that's what makes you strong.

It's so easy to get caught up in what people expect of you. Sometimes, you can just lose yourself.

Nothing like being scolded by a hippie.

One open, one closed. It was no wonder that the first image that came to mind when I thought of either of my sisters was a door. With Kirsten, it was the front one to our house, through which she was always coming in or out, usually in mid-sentence, a gaggle of friends trailing behind her. Whitney’s was the one to her bedroom, which she preferred to keep shut between her and the rest of us, always.

Once, she'd been a pro at decompressing, loved to sit on the back deck of the beach house in one of our splintery Adirondack chairs for hours at a time, staring at the ocean. She never had a book or the paper or anything else to distract her. Just the horizon, but it kept her attention, her gaze unwavering. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.