It was the word devotion that changed everything for me, not the word love.

This post is one big reminder to self: don’t live on auto-pilot. Try harder.

I celebrated the start of my birthday on the Nordic Trak, listening to the opening of She Sells Sanctuary by the Cult on repeat.

Dear, sweet Carole, I feel like the best thing I can do for you is to offer my hand. When your root base is uncertain, it is contact with friends and family of your own choosing that help keep an adoptee who feels rootless from wanting to die. I will hold your hand your entire life.

I have worked with people who more than almost anything want to tell their story and who are frozen by the fear that if they tell their truth, they will lose people they love.

I love Tim O’Brien’s book The Things We Carried because he tried to write the impossible, a true war story.

The other day I was talking to an adoptee about speaking publicly, on a stage, about adoption. “The problem with that,” she said, “is that then I would have to listen.”

I have never acted more privileged or entitled than when I approached my birth parents.

Not too long ago a man asked me about my best sexual fantasy. I thought it was a funny question to ask a near-stranger, so I thought I’d do something funny in return and tell him the truth.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry I struggle so much with this whole thing. I’m sorry I can’t be easier, more fun, less complicated.

One reason I brought my daughter to the Vineyard with me this weekend was to see if I could find a moment I’d been looking for most of my life.

I put the burger in front of my mouth and tried to suffocate myself while I was driving, but I instinctually chewed my way to safety, and two days later, there I was, an asshole with a dry erase and a lesson plan and thirty students who just wanted to understand how to construct an argument so they could pass the final exam.