What I want, more than anything, is to feel connected to myself and to others. To find form for what lives in me and yearns for a worldly shape. Stories, for me, and yes, books, are one of those recognizable shapes — a way of literally holding, and offering to others, one’s lived experience — and also of letting it go.
Read MoreBinary thinking doesn’t serve us. In this (or any) context, an all or nothing, either/or approach is not useful. As humans, we’re inevitably going to bring many thoughts and feelings to any table. The question, I suppose, is in how we can regard these — especially when there is inner turmoil or conflict — with some gentleness.
Read MoreIt’s not pretty to look at the parts of ourselves that exemplify the things we say we’re against — entitlement, white privilege, intellectual snobbery. But to not look at these, to choose to stay cloistered, sheltered, more “successful” in ways society recognizes and values, and what we may have been taught would be “safer,” is inexcusable for anyone who claims to care about justice and humanity.
Read MoreSomething begins to shift the moment we loosen the reigns and declare, “I am a person who writes. I am a writer.” And this is the crux of the matter: A writer is a person who writes, and not all writers must be authors.
Read MoreI’m here to remind myself — and maybe you reading — that what I’m doing here counts. It will change and grow and deepen and evolve, yes, but it is also, already, real. The tyranny of always getting somewhere else? It’s a racket.
Read MoreI sit with this for a moment, tears in my eyes. I feel the impulse to deflect it, to say something funny or self-deprecating. But I don’t. I take it in. And then I thank her and say, “I need you, too.”
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