“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome.” ~Brené Brown It happened on a regular Tuesday night over the smallest thing. I was cooking dinner after a really long, exhausting day at my job. I spent the whole day fixing problems for everyone…
“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” ~John Allen Paulos I refreshed the analytics page even though I had checked it only a few minutes earlier. The number had not changed, so I opened the project, reread the opening line, tested a button, and returned to the dashboard….
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” ~Carl Jung I was twenty-eight years old, standing in front of a mirror, reaching for my lipstick. I couldn’t put it on. I was engaged. A wedding was ahead of me. The invitations, expectations, and imagined future were already gathering momentum. Nothing was visibly wrong. That was…
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” ~William Bruce Cameron I noticed it halfway through the conversation. We were outside a café on a warm Saturday, close enough to the next table that I could hear someone laughing behind me. The person across from me was telling a story about getting…
“In an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still.” ~Pico Iyer, from his TED talk “The Art of Stillness” It was a Tuesday in late September, the kind of afternoon that feels borrowed from summer. I had a work deadline at 5:00. I went to the park anyway. I spread a blanket on the grass,…
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” ~Carl Rogers For most of my life, the story looked like a straight line going up. I never hit bottom. This isn’t that kind of story. And for a long time, that was exactly the problem. From the outside, my life looked…
“Whatever you’re feeling, it will eventually pass. You won’t feel sad forever. At some point, you will feel happy again. You won’t feel anxious forever. In time, you will feel calm again. You don’t have to fight your feelings or feel guilty for having them. You just have to accept them and be good to yourself while you ride…
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” ~Maya Angelou There’s a strange season in life when the old ambitions no longer fit, but the new ones haven’t fully formed yet. A year ago, I asked myself a simple question. Not a vague one. A very…
“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.” ~Anonymous My sister called four times before I picked up. Not four times in one day—four times over three weeks. Each time, I watched her name light up my phone, felt something tighten in my chest, and set my phone face-down on the counter. I…
“What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” ~Helen Keller Growing up, I thought my father was a pack rat. He never seemed to throw anything away. Bent nails. Odd screws. Washers without matching bolts. Short pieces of lumber that looked too small to be useful. If…
