I wish my parents had had Astrid on their speed dial when I was a child. I wish they had gone to her workshops for adoptive parents and I wish they had sent me to her workshops for adopted kids. I wish they had watched her DVD on how best to communicate with your adopted child.

There are so many reasons not to write. Harvey Weinstein. Food stamps. Constipation. Fear. But here is the truth, at the end of the day, you have a choice. You can pick up your pen, you can sit at your computer, and you can write.

Or you can just live your life.

It’s a win win. Living a life is a pretty wonderful thing, unless, of course, you feel you carry a story inside that you want or need to tell.

Then you better get to work. Make your space holy: honor your body, its needs. Listen to it. Live in it. Write down your life just because you can.

I had one of those realizations yesterday that left me standing by the road, stopped, not breathing, silenced by truth.

I had a teacher in graduate school, Ehud Havazelet. I can tell you now that I took my camera to the pawn shop and sold it so I could buy pot for Ehud when he asked if I had any—I can tell you because Ehud is dead. I wasn’t a pot smoker, but I was flattered he asked me. As if. As if I could comfortably inhale without coughing. Maybe I could not write as well as Ehud’s beloved Flannery O’Conner, but I sure as hell could get him some weed. It was a nice camera that I sold for a hundred bucks. It was a 35 mm that meant something to me, but it meant more to me to get my teacher some pot.

Am I a good eater? Am I a good breather? Is that the point? To survive I must eat. I must breathe. I believe the same is true for writing. I would love to write well. I would love to eat well, breathe well, but the fact of the matter is that life moves quickly and sometimes it’s not about how well you do something, but just that you do it. You do it with your heart in your mouth and you pray for beauty and clarity and understanding, but, always, always, you and your life and your writing are a work in progress. You just keep at it. It’s that you are doing it. That’s where the miracle lies. Not in the quality of the work, but in your dedication to the craft of being you.

2018 is the year of writing and community. I want to see how many people I can help get a book or something written finished so they can have the same relief I have of I did it! I wrote a book, a screenplay, a poem, a speech, a long-due break-up letter! I did it!

I would estimate that coming out of the fog has cost me about $60,000. This accounts for the amount of time I spent grieving instead of working and the amount I spent in desperate measures trying to get pain relief (shopping, acupuncture, travel, food, moving to New York for three months to write a book, etc.). I’m not sure how much Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke cost her. She didn’t mention that.

What I got out of listening to a company vice president and to two realtors was the importance of leaning in, not in the Cheryl Sanberg way, but in the physical, I really want to hear what you are saying way.

Let’s give adopted kids the boost they need to succeed in school. Let’s help them see they are safe. Let's get them help before they ask. Let's get them help before you think they need it. If you don’t know of any adoption-competent therapists, ask me. I’ll find you one.

Watching This is Us is like a full body workout as it goes for and clears trigger point after trigger point that I didn’t even know was there. Issues about my mother, my daughter, my job, my friends, my eating, my feelings are reflected back to me week after week, and I am more alive in my body because of this.

Our lives are experiments. If we are to be defined by what we set to paper without the opportunity for revision and new understanding or growth, then writing is like carving words into a tombstone.

My friend thinks of ways to get the boy excited about opportunity. If the boy studies, he can get into college. If he gets into college, he can be whatever he wants to be. You know. That kind of talk. The talk we give. The talk we heard.