My job title was youth advocate.  My mission was to help the girls succeed.  Succeeding meant not getting pregnant or locked up before graduating high school.  It meant eventually holding down a job.  It was such a small thing and yet it was enormous.  It was like trying to push an eighteen-wheeler with your pinkie finger.

The obliterated place is equal parts destruction and creation.  The obliterated place is pitch black and it is bright light.  It is water and it is parched earth.  It is mud and it is manna.  The work of deep grief is making a home there.

There are some things you can't understand yet.  Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding.  You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years.  Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.

On Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you.

In the middle of the night in the middle of your twenties when a friend crawls naked into your bed, straddles you and says, “You should run away from me before I devour you” . . . believe her.

Dear Younger Me, Stop worrying about whether you’re fat.  You’re not fat.  Actually, you’re a little bit fat, but who gives a shit?  Feed yourself.  The people worthy of your love will love you more for this.

You gave me,
Love,
Love, love, love, love.
So much love.

I’m a living dead dad.

I am forgiven.

I wanted to tell you I had this hot dream about you even though I don’t know what you look like, if your hair is straight or curly, if you're curvy or skinny, but it didn’t matter because you were woman and we were getting down.

Perhaps healing is the word and we don’t want to believe that.  We want to believe the word “healing” is more pure and perfect, like a baby on its birthday.

The night you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t “mean anything” because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship right now, just laugh and kiss him back.  Your daughter will have his sense of humor.  Your son will have his eyes.

A balcony view of the Tiny Beautiful Things set.

And I'll raise you one.