In my mind, I built stairways. At the end of the stairways, I imagined rooms. These were high, airy places with big windows and a cool breeze moving through. I imagined one room opening brightly...

I, too, was carrying around my own fate. All the things I couldn’t know sat somewhere inside, embroidered into me-maybe not quite fixed to the point of inevitability but waiting, in any event, for a...

What was reckless, I decided, was the way people were writing off huge swaths of the world as unsafe, unstable, unfriendly, when all they needed to do was go and see for themselves

It is an obvious fact that you can never look ahead with clarity at your own future or anybody else’s. You can’t know what will happen until it happens. Or maybe it dawns on you...

By concentrating on what I was grateful for, I was able to stave off despair.