Although these last few years have been wrenching and difficult—sometimes almost impossible—they have also been the most beautiful and profound of my life, requiring the daily act of holding life and death, joy and pain in balance and exploring new depths of gratitude and love.

By contrast, authentic grief has a strange and terrible sweetness. It’s like the difference between the poisonous ache in your muscles that comes from a flu virus and the ache you feel after a good, hard workout. Even as real grief breaks your heart, something in you knows that you’re being broken open, and there is something profoundly hopeful at

“Being able to say ‘this is who I am’ when everything else feels uncertain, flimsy, prone to dissolution, may be the greatest comfort we have. Is anything more seductive, more empowering?/ To be alive is to subject oneself to the reality of being permeable/ so, while I welcome the pleasure of those moments when I feel like myself, I don’t think I w