Family Is Who Shows Up: Why Blood Doesn’t Always Make You Kin
Family has never been a matter of blood. Not truly. The phrase is old and worn, like great-grandmother’s quilt passed down so many generations it has lost…
Health and Wellness
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Friends Just Get in the Way of Watching TV
The other night, in a moment of either deep cultural insight or total defeat, I found myself watching King of Queens while eating a bowl of cereal…
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How to Stay Sane in an Insane World: Lessons from a 4th-Century Truth Teller
In high school, I once got into an argument with a guidance counselor over the definition of the word “truth.” She said it was about facts. I…
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Living a Life Out of Context: Why Misfits, Exiles, and Outsiders Might Save Us
There are those who seem born already a few degrees off from the compass that most people follow. They live out of step, out of time, out…
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The Cost of the Mask
We are what we pretend to be. The trouble is, we have gotten very good at pretending. We wear the mask of confidence when we are unsure,…
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When Truth Appears Between Sips of Beer
It was one of those accidental evenings that becomes permanent in memory, not because anything grand happened, but because something true did. I was sitting in a…
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We Will See: A Story About My Ankle, a Hamster Funeral, and the Entire Meaning of Life
When I was nine years old, I broke my ankle falling off a tire swing in my friend Dustin’s backyard. It happened on a Tuesday, which meant…
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When Nothing Feels True Anymore, Try This
There is a room in the mind where silence waits. It is not a library. It is not a church. It is not the glowing blue rectangle…
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The Last Private Thing We Own
By now, most of us have accepted the quiet absurdity of our days: we speak to glowing rectangles, sleep beside them, wake to their alarms, carry them…
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Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say, Then Follow Through
I think that most of life’s disappointments can be traced back to someone saying one thing, meaning another, and doing precisely nothing. Maybe a friend promises to…