The vagus nerve is the wandering nerve. It hangs from your brain stem like wild roots of a stubborn weed to have conversation with your guts, heart, liver and other organs you probably wouldn’t want to touch if you could for fear of harming your darkest, most internal self. Also because touching your own guts is weird and unhealthy.

We want to be wild, but we are so frightened of our own power, and so we wear name tags and girdles and shoes so tight our feet bleed.

The temptation is to hold on, to stay in the shallow end, feet on the floor of what we know, but then our circulation goes stagnant and the brain gets bored, shrinks.

I used to think there was a black seed of bad in me. It was a thing I could feel, the seed. It was like I was an apple that was, at its heart, rotten.

Come back. I want a second chance with you. I won’t be as scared of you, of you leaving me. I won’t be so scared I’m turning into you. I won’t be so angry you don’t do a good job with your makeup because my eyeliner, when I wear it, is always smudged and a mess. I forget I put it on and rub my eyes.

I have spent the past three years obsessively reading, writing, and talking about being an adoptee. I want to spent the next three years, perhaps, learning more about what it’s like to be a first mother and an adoptive parent.

My friend got a present for Christmas, and I stole it.

I want to talk about executive function.

Buy a length of hose. Or buy a whole hose and cut off a piece about the length of your arm.

I’ve been in a weird state of anxiety lately—it came out of nowhere, and then, when I thought maybe I was having a heart attack, I remembered about the vagus nerve, and I went to my long-time yoga teacher, Kent Bond, for a private lesson.

Secrets are the death of the family, the soul, the space between us.

I used to go to the doctor a lot because there was always something wrong. I wanted a diagnosis. I wanted to feel safe in my body. Every time something hurt: my throat, my foot, my eye, I knew death was coming, and so I went straight to the doctor to find out what was wrong.