I’ve begun working on a memoir. I say begun, but I already have much too much to include – pages of stories about my life, research, photographs, etc. Random anecdotes that don’t exactly fit the puzzle and centrally important stories that I wish I could leave out, but can’t because they’re important to the narrative. It feels strange to be looking back over my life, realizing just how different things are than they once were. As I think about how small the circumference of my life used to be, I am flooded by waves of gratitude. There was a time when I was either homebound, isolated and self-destructive, or locked away in a treatment facility. Today, my life is so abundant that I’m often
So I don’t know what it’s like to be a man. But I know a little something about being a woman. I’m not typically a fan of blanket generalities, of putting people into boxes and categorizing individuals by gender or race or religion. Still, indulge me. Allow me to let my hypocritical flag fly. Women are different than men. And not just in terms of our parts – or the sum of them, but at a deep, core level. If you chipped away my iceberg exterior and exposed me at my center, just before reaching the little flame of self-love that I believe we’re all born with, you’d find a bone-chilling fear. What am I afraid of? Of not being enough. For whom? You might ask. And of what? But there is n
