Being told you are special is like someone carrying you around by the throat with their hands. Yes, you are not alone, but the price is high.

If you like David Sedaris, I think you will love Jen’s writing. If you don’t like him, still give Jen’s writing a shot because, after all, she is herself and that is one flipping amazing person and writer.

What if, when babies are born and taken from their mothers, a plug is pulled, and the baby loses a vital connection with source? What if the baby becomes a hungry ghost because all it knows is want, not have? What if, as a child, as an adult, this human surrounds itself with either too little or too much because just right is not a feeling he or she knows?

Her attempts to keep busy were mostly an effort to fill her life so that she had not time to feel disconsolate. But the nagging sadness was persistent, and it would envelop her when she least expected it.

“Who am I?” is the plaintive cry I used to put out into the world at least every other week.

I feel I have risked something when I write it.

Using COVID-19 as an excuse to continue to wield power over women’s bodies is another kind of virus.

What if this virus, this time we are asked to stay at home, is a new darkness? What if we are invited to be still and to germinate and to see who we really are when we let ourselves reach for the light?

The reason I do Write or Die is in large part to stir up the pot of you, to get you to rethink, revision, and reimagine who you are, what your story is, who your audience is, and what your blocks are.

I’m a feeling machine.

The next time I get to hug someone, I might not let go.

What I do know is that in an ocean of grief, I am a master wayfinder. I know how to hold my center and I am not afraid to sail into the storm. And I’m not the only one of my kind.