Fast forward several years. I didn’t want her around, but she kept appearing. Online, in memory, in person, in random connection with people I knew. It felt like our lives were linked, and it annoyed me. She bothered me, like an ant crawling up my leg.

If you’re anything like me, if you plan to spend time journeying into the past, you better pack an ample supply of forgiveness. We will face pain as we travel through memories. We’ve all been wronged. We’ve all been hurt, and it affects us, often deeply, and often over a long period of time.

Ah, there it was. That made sense. I was wanted, but the timing was difficult. That added up. Scientific studies confirm that babies pick up on emotions their mothers are feeling, even before they are born.

Sometimes, as we get older, we may feel the need to shrug off traditions as silly and maybe even stifling. They may seem like something that we do “just because” and we have no connection as to why our family may do it in the first place.

Have you ever come across an inconsequential event, but yet it evokes a strong emotion in you like anger, irritation, or sadness? That particular event isn’t necessarily sad or irritating, but for some reason, that’s what it caused you to feel?

And you know what? That’s okay. It’s no fault to have simply not lived long enough. I wish we talked about this more. I wish we acknowledged that there is no 5-step manual that can ever match or make up for actual living.

One that I can remember happened when I was five years old. It was Halloween, one of my favorite holidays growing up. This particular year however, would be a little different. Because Halloween fell on a Saturday, and my brother's birthday was just three days before, my parents decided to celebrate Halloween and a birthday all in one day. Unfortunately, they didn’t plan on me getting sick.

We all have fears we would rather not name and face. Part of being human includes learning that the only way to prevent our fears from controlling/shaping us is to face them. To sit with them. Many times facing our fears means realizing there may actually be a small piece of truth in it but with part of the picture that we haven’t seen before. 

Two months ago I wrote a letter. I wrote it exactly as I would have from my deathbed... except that I wasn't on my deathbed and that was the entire point. Movies really love to dramatize those end-of-life-bucket-list-final-hurrah moments but the truth is that if I really was on my deathbed I'd probably be so exhausted and busy with the work of ACTUALLY dying that writing such a letter would be ten times harder, if not impossible. So, better to do it now.

I once had someone compare the past to a car’s rearview mirror. They said, “You can’t drive forward while looking in the rearview mirror the entire time. The rearview mirror is important. You need to check what’s behind you, but you can only drive safely forward by looking through the windshield.”

“Run. Run away and never return.” -Scar, The Lion King

As a child, my siblings and I loved watching The Lion King. Yes, we had a crush on Simba. It’s entirely possible to have a crush on an animated lion at that age. But I remember watching the scene where Scar tells his nephew cub to run away and always being confused by it. 

Do you ever have recurring dreams? You wake up in the middle of the night or the early hours of the morning and remember distinctly what happened in the dream and then you say, oh I have had this dream before, multiple times actually. This happens to me all the time. One dream in particular that I have been having recently is getting locked out of my locker from high school. Now I should tell you that I have already been out of high school for over 10 years, so why does this dream keep coming up and why am I gripped with such terror when I am in the middle of this dream?