How are we supposed to live without a meteor bearing down on us? How are we supposed to find the best parts of humanity without a brutal regime at the door? How are we supposed to tell the people we love that we love them if we're not five minutes from being destroyed?That's the challenge of being alive.

If this was a parable, I guess the lesson would be that life isn't fair but if you complain sometimes you get free things.

You know She's All That-ing: it's that ancient African tradition wherein an unremarkable nerd transforms into a beautiful hottie just in time for the prom, usually by combing their hair and taking off their glasses. I didn't even have glasses! I was halfway to hot already!

Even from an early age, my parents imbued in us the knowledge that although life wasn't just, we could always do something about it.

But that place in me that compulsively cried to everyone who would listen is still in me; the bad times don't go away just because times are good.

The storyteller says, 'I am here. Does it matter?' The words that I found in these books were a person calling out from a page, 'I am worthy of being heard and you are worthy of hearing my story.' It seems simple but it's a bold declaration.

What is more romantic than the sudden revelation of the thing you didn't even dare to hope for?

No, but has the tyranny of facts ever stopped me before? Again, no.

I think it's important to note that that takes work: family doesn't just happen; welcome isn't a neutral state. We have to tend to these things.

It's easy for me to see the blind luck at play and hard for me to see the parts of me that put in the work.