I had a familiar feeling today when I was out in the woods with Bird: I gotta get out of here. I miss my daughter. I miss California. I miss having my own space. I want to drive across country with the windows open, Bird hanging his head out the passenger’s side window, happy.

I have learned something so important about myself this year: when I’m uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean I have to do anything about it. Even more, when I’m uncomfortable and wanting to run, I have the opportunity to put my face in what feels like fire and stay.

Many people miss their daughters. Many people wish they lived somewhere else. Many people would like more privacy. Many people would like to go for a long, long drive, sleep in pink motels, and eat only at Taco Bell.

When I used to teach writing at the girls’ juvenile hall, sometimes I would see one of the girls cross her arms over her chest and take some deep breaths. I learned this was a tool they’d been taught to interrupt the connection between stimulus and response. When you grew up in an abusive household, for example, and then someone in the hallway looks at you in a way that makes you want to rip off their face, you have a better chance at a good life if you learn to pause, to let the rip cord that was pulled in your brain by the expression on the other person’s face to dangle for a few moments, enough time for you to ask, Is this a smart move? Do I want more time behind bars just for the satisfaction of showing this b***** what I think about how she looked at me?

I think about the time I had dropped out of college and was living back at home with my parents and was desperate to escape. It was like I was on fire in a gas station. There was no way I could stay. I don’t know how else to say it. Even though, on the surface, I was just a young woman that needed to go out and get a job and get on with her life after making a decision that had broken her mother’s heart. Somehow, moving forward did not feel like an option. It was like I was pressed up against a brick wall with the adults around me saying, Come on. Just take the next step. I took a check out of my mother’s checkbook and made it out for the amount of money I needed and signed her name.

Decades later, when she was dying, I held her and we both cried as I said, over and over, I am so sorry I did that.

If I’d had to stay, if I’d really had to figure out how to negotiate my life from where it was, I would have had to dig deep and found new abilities. I would have surprised myself with the ability to make my way in the world without stealing, without running. Making my own on my own abilities and strengths, things I hadn’t believed in and so wanted to run.

Here’s what I’ve learned. When my brain and body are convinced I’m pressed up against a brick wall, I have to take a step anyway. This sounds small and easy, but truly, imagine that you are truly, truly pressed up against a wall and someone tells you that you have to take a step forward. How in the holy hell am I supposed to do that?

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade shows how. Indy had to step into an abyss. There was no other way for him to live than to take a step that looked like certain death, and yet, when he took the step, a magical bridge appeared.

When you were separated from your mother at birth, it can be nearly impossible to believe the world is a place that is on your side and wants you to survive. It can be easy to go into some form of collapse when things get hard and in response you just sort of…quit.

But quitting’s no fun—at least not after the initial relief wears off.

Here’s what I’ve found IS fun. When things get tough and I want to run, I stay, but I stay on MY terms. I don’t stay because someone else said I should or to prove myself to someone else. I stay because I know I’m getting stronger, and that the stronger I am, the more fun I am going to have living out the kind of life I want for myself. That, dear reader, is the key bit for adoptees, I think. You, they, we, have to stay because you, we, they have dreams worth staying for.

I am staying in Massachusetts because I am working on a book I believe in with my whole heart, and if I have to endure some discomfort so it gets done, then all right! I’m in. All I have to do is watch an episode of Chef’s Table to be reminded that being committed to creating a vision has a price. I can work really, really hard for what I want. I’m just done working really, really hard because I don’t know what else to do.

Amen, etc.