I have a bad habit which is that I typically discount my non fiction as being irrelevant. While I know I can nail a snarky bon mot or two, they tend to be the pieces where I expect, at the end of the day, I’ll be the kid standing alone in the rain in the middle of the playground, ice cream dripping into the mud.

And then something else happens. People like these pieces. They say, yeah, I get that, yeah, I see me there. I feel that too.

It’s taken me a lifetime to get out of my own skin, my own head, my own way. And out here, even though I can hide from time to time, it becomes clear that I’m just like everyone else. Things hurt us all the same. As Cat Rambo once told a class I attended, we tend to experience things the same way even if we feel like it isn’t possible. I’m reminded of this over and over again.

So many friends shared my words of warning/terrible confessional, “The Finger,” from the ever-fabulous Punchnel’s this week, I can hardly keep up. But I’m so grateful that it was well received and I was graced with another gentle reminder that we’re all in this together.

xo