I owe you a Sunday essay. Shoot, I owe you a few, as well as some Wednesday letters.

A couple of weeks ago, I got overwhelmed. Not by anything particularly dramatic. Life just became loud, and writing - the thing that had felt like such a beautiful place to pour that loudness into, felt like one more place I was ‘expected’ to show up.

So I didn’t.

I told myself I needed a week. I gave myself permission to be quiet, which is never my thing. And then, about a week into my little break, my birth grandmother died. A woman I had never met in person. If you have been following along on my Instagram, I mentioned during Covid that I reached out to meet her, having only exchanged a couple of letters a decade or so before. We chatted a couple of times over Zoom and she wasn’t quite ‘ready’ to meet in person, saying my face looked too much like her late daughter’s (my birth mother) and it was just too heartbreaking to look at me.

Years later, she asked me to come. My older brothers kindly warned to not go alone - and I agreed it wouldn’t be smart for me - or safe - so I used that as an excuse not to go. I recently began dating an incredible man who, upon hearing that I really wanted to go, immediately pulled up flights and wanted to be my side.

I reached out to birth Grandma Jean, but she never wrote back. Her only living relative told me she had passed a few months prior. I was completely gutted. And I still am, in some ways.

Her death has broken my heart in a way I wasn’t prepared for, and I’ve been trying to understand why. I think part of it is that I’m not only grieving her, I’m grieving the unanswered questions. The things I know she, and only she, knows. When we spoke I asked her everything, but she was so ashamed of the story (if this sounds vague to you, that’s on purpose, I am sharing the full story shortly and it is too much to put into a simple essay like this) that she held back information.

Since my birth mother is gone, too, there were still so many things I wanted to know about her. Things only a mother might remember. Who was she before life happened to her? What was she like as a little girl? What made her laugh? What scared her? Was she like me? Am I like her?

There are questions you don’t realize you’ve been saving until the person who could answer them is gone. You’d think I know this - considering everything I’ve been through. And I do - and I asked the questions. But she could only answer what she was comfortable with. And I do respect that. And, both can be true - I wanted more.

These past few weeks I have been grieving an ending to a story I only learned I had in my adult life.

That’s the strange thing about finding your birth family as an adult. Everyone talks about discovery. The reunion. The names and photographs and DNA matches and Oh my God, you have her eyes.

We don’t talk as much about time.

You arrive late to a story that has been unfolding without you for decades. People have lived whole lives before you knew where to find them. Memories have already disappeared. People who knew the beginning of your story may be approaching the ends of theirs.

And you have to somehow make peace with loving people you barely had time to know. Or do you? I’m still debating, forgiving things I know but they don’t, it’s all…complicated.

Maybe even grieving people you never got the chance to know at all.

I’ve thought a lot about whether I’m “allowed” to be this heartbroken over someone I never sat beside. Grief has a funny way of making us feel like we need some sort of credentials. As if proximity determines loss. Have you ever felt this way? Am I alone in this?

But I’m beginning to understand that I’m not grieving the number of memories my grandmother and I made together. I’m grieving the ones we won’t, and I’m grieving the questions I didn’t get to ask. I’m grieving another connection to my birth mother disappearing. I only have one left, in this entire world. Unless I can find my birthfather…somehow.

And maybe, if I’m being completely honest, I’m grieving the fantasy that there would always be more time. There is another reason all of this feels particularly enormous right now.

In just a couple of weeks, an interview I’ve mentioned here before will air. And for the first time, I’m going to publicly tell my birth story. Well, not only publicly, there are so many people in my life who don’t know the depth of my truth.

I’ve protected the biggest piece of this story for decades. (And - before you read this next line I need you to know I mean this and it is important to be emotionally honest.) Because I was ashamed of them, the family I came from. I grew up thinking these certain people who made the news like this were dirty, awful people. That was media in the 80’s and 90’s. We ate what we were fed and we didn’t question it. News was truth. I was raised by very open-minded diverse parents who were proud to introduce us to a diverse cultural experience anytime they could. And yet - there were people being broadcast in the news as ‘bad people’ and I believed it. Everyone in the world did.

Until I learned that’s where I came from - and unlearned the shame, the narrative, and began to love where I came from.

And then the story wasn’t about “those people” anymore. It was about my people. It was about me.

There were other reasons I protected it, too. Because it involved people I loved. Because some truths take time before they belong in daylight. Because, as I’ve written here before, privacy is sacred—and telling the truth doesn’t mean everyone is entitled to it before you’re ready.

Now I’m ready.

I just didn’t expect that, weeks before opening this enormous door to the world in an interview, another one would close.

There’s something almost unbearably poetic about that. My life has been stitched together by loss and survival, things found just as others disappear, doors slammed shut and others somehow opening, impossible second chances, and grief woven so tightly through joy that I’m no longer sure where one ends and the other begins. Still, I have this stubborn refusal to let any ending have the final word.

Somehow, I keep finding my way home. I’ve spent so much of my life thinking “coming home” meant arriving somewhere. Finding the answer. Meeting the person. Understanding the story. Finally being able to point to something and say, There. That’s where I came from.

I’m learning that sometimes coming home means accepting what you will never know. There will be questions about my birth mother I will never have answered. There are stories my grandmother took with her. There are pieces of myself I may spend the rest of my life wondering about. And perhaps becoming whole doesn’t require recovering every missing piece.

Maybe healing is learning that we can honor the blank spaces, too. Ughh, deep breath in, deep breath out.

I started The Long Way Home because I wanted somewhere to tell the stories underneath the stories people already know about me. I wanted somewhere I could write about what happens after survival becomes your everyday life. About identity and family and belonging and all the strange, beautiful, painful ways we try to understand who we are.

And then I stopped writing for a few weeks because life happened. Maybe that’s part of the story, too.

So I’m back.

Not with a perfectly wrapped lesson about grief. I don’t have one.

I’m heartbroken. I’m grateful. I’m curious. I’m angry at times, even though I know now that anger is grief. I’m extraordinarily thankful for the few conversations I did have with my birth grandmother, while wishing desperately that I’d asked a hundred more questions when I had the chance, and, that she answered the ones I did ask.

And in a couple of weeks, I’m going to tell a story I’ve carried quietly for a very long time.

I wish she were here to see it. Also, Maybe it’s ok she’s not, in some ways. I think it might have been too much. Both can be true.

So maybe coming home isn’t always about finding everyone waiting for us when we arrive. Maybe it’s about carrying them with us when they’re not.

And continuing the story anyway.

I’ll be back to write this week. Thank you for being here.

Lately, more than a few people have asked me why I’m doing interviews again.

“Haven’t you already told your story?”

“Why keep putting your life out there?”

“Don’t you ever want to move on?”

They’re fair questions. Especially now, as another interview is set to come out this fall - one that reveals parts of my life I’ve kept tucked away for decades. I understand why people ask.

From the outside, telling more of your story can look like exposing yourself. Like reopening wounds that should have been left alone. Like choosing vulnerability for vulnerability’s sake.

But that’s never how it has felt to me.

The world often mistakes authenticity for oversharing because we’ve become so accustomed to polished versions of people. We’ve learned to admire carefully curated Instagram lives while becoming suspicious of anyone who says, “Here’s what really happened.”

Somewhere along the way, honesty became confused with attention-seeking. And I hate that for us. It makes me sad. We celebrate people for “being real” until they’re real in ways that make us uncomfortable.

We’re drawn to stories of resilience, but we prefer them after they’ve been wrapped neatly in a bow. Carefully thought-out before and after photos with a checklist of ‘Here’s how you can do it, too!’ I know first hand that those photos go crazy on Instagram. I always think it’s silly but I also…like it too? We like healing best when it’s tidy, complete, and safely in the past. However. Real healing rarely looks like that.

Healing has not made me want to tell everyone everything.

It has made me less interested in pretending.

There is a difference. I’ve never believed authenticity means giving everyone unlimited access to your life. Boundaries are healthy. Privacy is sacred.

Some parts of our stories belong only to us, or to the people we’ve entrusted with them. But the truth? The truth deserves daylight when we’re ready.

Not because we owe it to anyone. But because hiding eventually costs us.

For a long time, I thought resilience meant surviving. Now I wonder if resilience is simply becoming more yourself - not the polished version, not the inspirational version, not the version other people are most comfortable with.

Just... you. Patched together. Scarred. Packed full of love still, though now that love is mixed with ptsd, fear, hope, memories, healing, and dreams. Still beating.

I don’t see my heart on my sleeve as indecent exposure. I see it as the heart I was given - at birth, and now - in all of its patched-up, scarred, but still beating self.

That doesn’t mean I don’t understand the risk.

I know that when you put your heart where people can see it, some people will try to take advantage of it. And they sure have. Some people will misunderstand it. And they sure do. Some people will use your openness as an invitation to judge, criticize, or hurt you. Believe me, I know.

But I refuse to let the people who mishandle my vulnerability convince me that vulnerability itself is the problem.

I would rather live with an open heart than spend my life protecting it so carefully that no one - including me - wait - especially me - gets to experience its fullness.

And I think often about where that came from. I was raised by parents who owned and operated children’s bookstores and record shops in the greater Seattle area. It wasn’t just a business. It was a place where community was built around stories and truth that mattered.

They believed children deserved books that made them think. They championed for books that people wanted banned. They welcomed new ideas instead of fearing them.

They taught me that voices matter - not because they’re loud, but because they’re honest.

I grew up believing stories could change people. That telling the truth was an act of generosity. Generosity of inviting others in to get to know the real us. That using your voice for good wasn’t optional if you’d been given one.

Looking back, maybe I never really had a chance of becoming someone who kept quiet. (This is the line of the essay where my mom and dad will call and quote - hi guys! I know, I haven’t been silent a day in my life…ha!)

The interview coming out this fall isn’t about revisiting the past for the sake of revisiting it. It’s about telling a truth I’ve been carrying for a very long time.

Not because I need the world to know it. Though, this is true - I want the world to know it.

Because I think someone else needs to hear it.

If sharing more of my story helps even one family make sense of their own...

If it helps someone finally name something they’ve carried in silence...

If it creates compassion for families whose lives were forever shaped by a very public trauma in the 1970s and 1980s...

Then telling the truth isn’t exposure.

It’s service.

People are free to see my heart on my sleeve however they’d like. Some will call it too much. Some will mistake openness for weakness. (It’s always the Brads and Chads, am I right?) Some will think I should have kept it to myself.

And that’s okay.

Healing has taught me that becoming the most real version of yourself will always make some people uncomfortable. Not because authenticity is dangerous. But because it quietly invites everyone else to stop pretending, too.

And maybe that’s what coming home really is.

Not arriving polished.

Not arriving fearless.

Just arriving as yourself.

Patched-up.

Scarred.

Still beating.

And no longer ashamed for anyone to see it. I think that’s why I like rolling up my sleeves…that heart of mine can’t be kept hidden.

Thank you for joining me, and I hope to see you on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I’m continuing that conversation: what happens when you finally say the truth out loud… and then have to make peace with how others respond to it.

Because telling the truth can be freeing. But learning that you don’t get to control what people do with that truth? That’s a different story. And I’m still learning it.

One of my favorite things in the world is meeting people.

Truly. I live for it. It lights me up in ways I can’t explain.

It’s one of the greatest gifts my work has given me. Whether it’s after a speaking event, in an airport, walking through a grocery store, or now through these essays, I genuinely love hearing people’s stories. I’m endlessly fascinated by what people carry, how they carry it, what they’ve survived, what they dream about, and how beautifully complicated every life becomes if we’re willing to listen long enough.

This week a few people stopped me to tell me they had been inspired by my story. They shared kind words or a quick thank you on a running path in the park. Moments like those never become ordinary. I hope they never do.

But they have also reminded me of something I’ve been trying to find words for over the last thirteen years.

The world met me on the worst day of my life.

Most people don’t get introduced that way.

When someone first learned my name, it was often attached to words like Boston Marathon bombing survivor, resilient, strong, or inspiring. Journalists introduced me that way. Organizations introduced me that way before I walked onto a stage. Presidents used my story in speeches. Somewhere along the way, those words became attached to my name before I ever had the chance to introduce myself.

And listen, I’m not complaining and I don’t want you to misunderstand me.

I understand why.

Those words came from kindness. They came from people trying to make sense of something unimaginable. They came from generosity.

But something strange happens when the world becomes very certain about who you are before you’ve had the chance to figure it out yourself.

You begin to wonder if you’re allowed to have ordinary days.

If you’re allowed to feel discouraged, angry, or exhausted.

If you’re allowed to be the one who needs encouragement instead of the one offering it.

(This has been an ongoing therapy topic for me.)

For a long time, I quietly believed I had to live up to the introduction.

If people believed I was resilient, I should be resilient.

If people believed I was strong, I should be strong.

If people believed I was inspiring, I certainly shouldn’t let them see the days I felt anything but. (I’m working on it)

The irony, of course, is that none of those things made me stronger.

THEY ONLY DID ONE THING. They made me quieter.

Not because anyone asked me to hide those parts of myself, but because I wasn’t sure where they fit inside the story everyone already knew.

Over time, though, I’ve realized something that has been quietly changing me.

The most meaningful conversations I’ve ever had with another human being have never happened because I appeared strong.

They happened because someone recognized something honest.

Not perfection.

Not resilience.

Honesty.

Perhaps that’s why writing these essays feels so different than standing on a stage.

On stage, I’m often introduced before I speak.

Here, in these weekly Sunday Morning Essays, and Wednesday Letters, I get to introduce myself.

Not as a survivor.

Not as an amputee.

Not as someone who has life figured out. Ha! Could you imagine me trying to pull that off?!

Just as Adrianne.

A woman who is still becoming. Still going inward to ask who I am, what do I want, what do I want to be known for, remembered by. Still asking questions. Still getting things wrong. Still finding her way home.

And maybe that’s the introduction I’ve been waiting thirteen years to give.

Because surviving was never the end of my story. And ‘global inspiration’ was never a job title.

It was a description of one chapter. One season. One response to something I never would have chosen.

But a life is so much bigger than the chapter that first introduced us.

I have other parts, too.

Curious parts. Messy parts. Joyful parts. Parts that still get scared. Parts that laugh too loudly. Parts that are still learning, still changing, still finding their way home.

And maybe that’s why I love meeting new people so much.

Because I’ve learned not to stop at the first introduction.

Every person I meet is carrying a story that deserves more than a headline. Just as every part of me deserves more than one, too.

Thank you for being here.

But if I’m honest, the moments that stay with me rarely happen on the stage.

They happen afterward, once everyone else has left the room.

I see someone waiting patiently by the edge of the stage, looking a little nervous. Someone walks beside me toward the elevator. Someone catches me in the hallway just before I leave, or pulls up a seat next to me at the hotel bar that evening. Sometimes it’s an email that arrives days later. Sometimes it’s a direct message that begins with the words, “I’ve never told anyone this before...”

What follows is almost never a question about speaking.

It’s about life, grief, marriage, addiction, loss, shame, regret, PTSD, impostor syndrome, hope, fears - the invisible barbells we carry.

Always about the parts of ourselves we spend so much energy trying to hide.

Over the years, I’ve realized something remarkable. Although our stories are wildly different, the questions underneath them are often the same.

We’re all wondering if we’re enough. If we’re too broken. If it’s too late. If anyone else has ever felt this way.

I’ve come to realize that waiting by the stage, walking to the elevator, sending an email days later, replying to an essay, or quietly pressing “send” on a message that begins, “I’ve never told anyone this before...” are all the same moment in different forms.

What I hear beneath every one of them is this:

“I think you might understand.”

That is an extraordinary responsibility.

It is also one of the greatest privileges of my life.

If the greatest gift is to be invited into someone’s struggle, why is it so hard to tell someone we’re struggling?

I know, I know. Deep breath in, and a deep breath out.

I think that’s one of the reasons I wanted to start The Long Way Home.

Those conversations shouldn’t only happen in hotel hallways, airport terminals, or after the audience has gone home.

They deserve a place to live.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s what we’re building here, together. A place for all of those conversations to live.

Starting this week, I’ll be adding a Wednesday Letter alongside my Sunday essays.

The Sunday essays are where I’ll continue exploring the bigger questions—the stories, experiences, and moments that shape who we become.

The Wednesday Letters will be a little different. They’ll be the quieter conversations. The thoughts that linger after the essay is finished. The moments that feel like they belong in the space between one Sunday and the next.

Another place for us to pull up a chair.

If this piece made you think, or if these conversations have meant something to you, a paid subscription is one of the best ways to support my work. Every paid subscriber makes it possible for me to keep going deeper, keep telling the truth, and keep building something real here for a long time to come.

Thank you for being here.

In Sunday's essay, I'll explore what it means to have the world meet me on the worst day of my life—and how I've spent thirteen years since introducing myself again. For years I've been introduced as a survivor. But no one ever tells you what happens when the surviving part becomes the least interesting thing about you…I hope you’ll join me!

For a long time, I thought healing was a destination. I imagined it as a finish line, or a moment in time somewhere in the distance - a place I would eventually arrive if I just worked hard enough, grieved correctly enough, healed thoroughly enough.

After 2013, I truly believed that one day I would wake up and somehow know. As if there would be a cartoon check mark floating above my head to let everyone (and most importantly, myself) know. “Congratulations, Adrianne, you did it! Look folks, she’s got the ‘all better’ checkmark, she’s finally done it! She’s all better now. We checked that box and she can move on with her life exactly as before.”

It may sound ridiculous, but I think many of us quietly believe some version of this.

We think healing means becoming the very best version of ourselves. A stronger version. A less messy version. A version untouched by grief, heartbreak, disappointment, trauma, loss, or regret. We think that if we do the work, read the books, buy the gadgets, attend enough therapy sessions, and have enough difficult conversations, someday we will arrive at the shiniest, tidiest version of ourselves—the version that finally feels easy to love.

Yet lately, I’ve been wondering if we’ve gotten it backwards.

What if healing is not becoming the best version of ourselves. What if healing is letting the worst parts of ourselves be deeply loved?

I know. Deep breath in… Deep breath out.

Let’s consider this idea. To be brave enough to love all of our parts. The terrified, embarrassing, imperfect, angry, grieving, exhausted parts. The parts that still ache, and are embarrassed because they still ache. The parts that are sure as sh*t something bad will happen at any moment. The parts that don’t understand why something from ten years ago can suddenly pop up on an ordinary Tuesday.

And perhaps most of all, the parts we hide from ourselves.

I spent years trying to rush back to some sort of ‘normal’ - not intentionally. I simply became very good at moving forward. I built a new life in a new body. I traveled. I fell deeply in - and out - of love. I spoke on stages around the world about how resilient I had become. I learned how to inspire others while still trying to understand myself. And I still am.

And those things were beautiful.

However. The amount of healing one can do is directly proportionate to the amount one can look at themselves without turning away.

I know, I know, another deep breath in, and a deep breath out.

We think healing happens simply because enough time has passed. But that’s not it. Healing happens when we become willing to turn toward ourselves. To sit beside the versions of ourselves that are still hurting. To stop demanding that they hurry up. To stop asking them to be smaller, quieter, easier. To stop treating them as though they are standing in the way of our lives.

Because they are our lives.

Instead of hiding, ignoring, and pushing those parts down like abandoned children of our past selves, I remind myself that ALL of my parts are trying to help me. They remind me where we’ve been, and guide me where I’m going.

I think this is what I have been learning as I find my way home.

Home is not arriving at some perfected version of ourselves. Home is finally creating enough safety within ourselves that every version gets to come inside.

The grieving one. The hopeful one. The angry one. The joyful one. The one who still needs help yet is afraid to ask for it. The one who is shaking in the corner in shame. The one who thought she would be someone entirely different by now.

They all belong here.

Perhaps this is why vulnerability matters so much. Healing cannot happen in hiding. Shame can only survive if we keep it inside. Shame dies in rooms where we say the hard thing out loud. We cannot heal the parts of ourselves we refuse to look at, and we cannot deeply love the parts of ourselves that we keep locked up.

Healing asks something much more difficult of us.

It asks us to tell the truth.

To let others witness our humanity.

But perhaps even harder than that, it asks us to witness it ourselves. To look directly at our own messiness, our fears, our grief, our imperfections, and instead of turning away, to gently say:

“Come in.”

“You belong here too.”

I like to picture all of my parts as children I’m inviting to come sit on the carpet at school. Where I am the adult now. And I am making sure not one single one of those kiddos is labeled difficult.

Maybe that is what coming home really means.

Not that I have finally figured everything out. Not that I have found my cartoon ‘all better’ checkmark. (Though I still ache for it some days) But after taking the long road, after all the striving, surviving, and searching - I finally stopped standing at the door of my own heart asking whether I am worthy of entering.

Because here’s the thing…we can simply walk in.

And if we are lucky, we discover that we were never too broken. Never too messy. Never too much.

We were simply waiting to be loved by ourselves. Our home.

Perhaps that’s the beautiful thing about taking the long way home.

You eventually realize that home was never perfection.

It was belonging.

And every part of you has been waiting there all along - to be invited in.

In next Sunday's essay, I'll explore what it means to have the world meet me on the worst day of my life—and how I've spent thirteen years since introducing myself again. For years I've been introduced as a survivor. But no one ever tells you what happens when the surviving part becomes the least interesting thing about you…I hope you’ll join me.

I didn’t expect to move back home.

At least not like this.

When I first left Seattle eighteen years ago, what I didn’t realize was that I was also leaving versions of myself behind. My twenty-year-old self who thought she would be Ginger Rogers when she grew up. The daughter who had regular daddy-daughter date nights at WNBA games and pizza joints. The person who thought she knew exactly where she was headed.

Life, as it turns out, had other things in store for me.

Some of that was breathtakingly beautiful. Some was gut-wrenching and heartbreaking. Yet all of it changed me forever.

I’ve lived many lives since finding my long way home.

I’ve stood on stages around the world and shared stories with millions of people. I’ve spent countless nights in hotel rooms, airports, countries, and cities that all began to blur together. I’ve experienced profound joy and unimaginable loss. I’ve learned how to begin again more times than I can count.

And somewhere along the way, I became very good at moving forward.

Forward is celebrated, after all.

Keep going. Keep building. Keep achieving. Keep becoming.

But no one talks much about returning.

No one talks about what it feels like to come back to a place that remembers a version of you that no longer exists.

Or does it?

They say you can’t move home again because the home you remember is a version of yourself that is no longer there. Yet is that really true?

There is something disorienting about returning to your hometown after eighteen years away.

The streets look familiar. The coffee shops are still here. (Thank goodness.) Certain smells instantly transport you to another time.

And yet, you are entirely different.

You find yourself wondering: Who would I have become if I had never left?

Would she recognize me?

Would I recognize her?

I’d like to think I would. Yet I don’t know for sure.

What I do know is this:

Home has become a much more complicated word than I once thought.

Home is not just a place. It is a hug from your childhood person. It is a memory on a random street corner of a last-minute dance rehearsal. It is Fred becoming enamored with every nook and cranny of my childhood home where my parents still live on the lake.

Sometimes it is a conversation that makes you feel seen.

Sometimes it is finally telling the truth.

And sometimes, home is simply the quiet realization that after years of searching, striving, surviving, and reinventing yourself, you are finally beginning to feel at home within your own life.

I used to think resilience meant surviving what happened to me.

Pushing through.

Enduring.

Never allowing myself to be defined by the hardest things I had experienced.

Lately, though, I’ve been wondering if resilience is something gentler than that.

Maybe resilience is having the courage to return.

To old stories. To forgotten parts of ourselves. To places we once loved. To questions we’ve spent years contemplating.

Maybe resilience is allowing ourselves to become someone new while still honoring who we have been.

That becoming is not a destination.

That some journeys take a lifetime.

I think that’s why this season of my life feels different.

Because for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I am racing toward something.

Or away from anything.

I feel like I am arriving.

Softly.

Imperfectly.

Unexpectedly.

I moved back to Seattle after everything.

After all the chapters that changed me.

After all the places and Adriannes that I’d been.

After all the versions of myself (and body parts) I’ve had to say goodbye to.

And in many ways, it feels like I am coming home for the very first time.

Not because I have all the answers.

Not because everything suddenly makes sense.

But because I am learning that home is not necessarily where we started.

Perhaps home is where we finally allow ourselves to rest.

Our breath.

Our hearts.

To tell the truth.

To belong.

To become.

These essays are for anyone who has ever wondered how they got here. For anyone who has had to begin again. For anyone who has looked at their life and realized it turned out differently than they imagined.

For anyone who is still trying to figure out where—and who—home is.

While I don’t know exactly where this road leads, I have a feeling many of us are walking it together.

Perhaps that’s the beautiful thing about taking the long way.

You notice more.

You carry more.

You become more.

And if you’re very lucky, somewhere along the winding path, you discover that you were never really lost.

You were on your way home.

In next Sunday morning’s essay, I look forward to exploring how healing is not becoming the best version of yourself. Healing is letting the worst parts of yourself be deeply loved, and how that leads you home. I hope you’ll join me.

For most of my life, I thought resilience meant learning how to survive what happened to me. To push through, to fight like hell against anyone who dare call me a victim. (insert my therapist here; ‘Do you think allowing yourself to be the victim would give space for empathy?’) more on this in an upcoming essay.

I’m beginning to think resilience may mean something else entirely.

Maybe resilience is the long, winding process of finally becoming ourselves again - sometimes for the very first time.

This newsletter is a place for stories. Stories about coming home to my body again, stories about protecting the truth until you’re ready, telling my truth after keeping my birth mother a secret for twenty six years, speaking on stages and holding space for both great joy and great grief that comes with being in the public eye, and how being called inspirational has shaped my personal identity. I talk about family, friendships that come and go, relationships, and the grief, joy, loss, and the ordinary moments that somehow end up changing us. Oh, and everyone’s fluffy friendly friend, Fred is excited to launch the Fred Files - essays on what it is really like to support someone you love.

If you’ve ever found yourself asking, “How did I get here?” or “Who am I now?” or “What does home even mean anymore?” then perhaps you, too, are on your own long way home.

This newsletter isn’t centered around being inspirational. It isn’t even centered around resilience. This is a place to think about being human.

I’m glad you’re here. Subscribe to receive essays directly to your inbox every Sunday morning.