Every now and then, a song about a younger version of me will come on the radio, and I’ll take a second to appreciate the contrast between then and now.
All that hard stuff turned out to be good for me, in the end.
It cracked me open. And you know that old saying about cracks: they’re how the sea breezes get through.
REMEMBER WHEN BEANIEteased me and said, “You’re afraid of a bathing suit?”
She knew what she was doing.
She was trying to remind me that I had a lot more power than I thought I did.
She was trying to get me to see myself differently.
The swimming wasn’t just about swimming. Nor was it just about letting myself love color, or reclaiming my right to splash in the water, or learning to be unapologetically alive in the world.
It was about the deep, enduring comfort that comes from looking at your life for exactly what it is, and exactly how it’s unfolded—and really seeing it. The past can’t hurt you now like it did then. The story of your life is always full of mystery. You can unfold it on a table like a map, and study it, and understand it in new ways.
It’s not different, but you are.
I can still hear Beanie saying,“You have to do the thing you’re afraid of.”
Bless her self-help-loving heart. She was right about that, too.
That’s what no one ever tells you. You can look around with your own eyes. You can find your own details. Notice for yourself what matters—and decide what it means.
It’s as true as it is life-changing.
But the only way to do it is to do it.
And now I have.
We’re here to be alive. To keep going. To find all kinds of ways to thrive anyway. We’re here to feel it all. To love and cry and love some more.
We’re here to rescue ourselves—and everybody else—in every way that we can.
What was it Rue said about courage? That no one’s born fearless?
It’s true.
EX-FIANCÉE OF LUCAS BANKS HAS REALLY LET HERSELF GO, they said.
They were so infinitely wrong—but so accidentally right.
That’s the truth, and I’ll take it where I can get it.
She reallyhaslet herself go.
And as Rue would say: How glorious.
