...music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, … - Anne Lamott

Until recently I barely even knew the signs of welcome, like the way a person plopped down across from me and sighed deeply while looking at me with relief: a shy look on someone’s face that gave me time to breathe and settle in. I didn’t know that wounds and scars were what we find welcoming, because they are like ours. Trappings and charm wear off, I’ve learned. The book of welcome says, Let people see you.

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.

But when someone enters that valley with you, that mud, it somehow saves you again.