You want to try something new, but you worry you’ll be bad at it—you fear you’ll humiliate yourself—and so you never start. But I knew that a fear-driven life was one where I never made plans, where I stopped myself from dreaming ambitiously. It meant living safe and small, always hedging against the worst-case scenario. Instead, I wanted to live

And that’s the point. To return to Didion: “Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.”

I had no idea I was such a convincing actress, and no idea that “fine” was not a little white lie, but a brick wall I’d placed between me and the people who loved me. Because I wanted to be fine. Because I was too afraid to look at my own pain and need, let alone share it with another person. Because I was afraid that if someone saw the truth, it

Whatever the voice says, make no mistake: It is not here to help you. Its aim is the total annihilation of the creative process.

I wrote about the person I wanted to become and the distance between me and her.

tried to journal about my stuckness and to dream about what my next steps might be, the voices of doubt and fear immediately chimed in. But what if you’re not well enough? they said. What if some known or unknown danger upends the plan? What’s the point of rebuilding only to have the ceiling cave in again? I do this sort of tango with fear perhaps

our imaginations allow us to experience the things we hear and see as if they were our own, which leads to powerful connections.

I believe that welcoming subjectivity into our lives opens the doors to seeing the unseen. Subjectivity offers us a way of seeing from different angles and myriad perspectives. It fuels an examination of a nascent point of view and helps bring clarity to the amorphous, fuzzy concepts and questions we grapple with. It is only when we experiment and

What do we do? How do we get through? How do we stay connected? How do we remain hopeful and grounded in the face of so much uncertainty and fear?