I'm the luckiest girl . . . If you were standing up at my eulogy, it's just the most extraordinary life

I look at some of my worst relationships and think, At least they didn’t hit me. I work from a place of gratitude for the bare minimum. Since then I’ve never been in a relationship where I’ve had to hide nonconsensual bruises. I’ve never feared for my life. I’ve never been in a situation where I couldn’t walk away. Does this make me a lucky girl? Given the stories I’ve heard from other women, yes, it does make me a lucky girl. This is not how we should measure luck.

I’m just saying, I guess, that I got very lucky. And luck is not a business model.

There is more to me than just a tabloid girl. This whole "Poor lonely Jen" thing, this idea that I'm so unlucky in love? I actually feel I've been unbelievably lucky in love. Just because at this stage my life doesn't have the traditional framework to it — the husband and the two kids and the house in Connecticut — it's mine. It's my experience. And if you don't like the way it looks, then stop looking at it! Because I feel good. I don't feel like I'm supposed to be any further along or somewhere that I'm not. I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

And it’s a shame that the measure is what is not so bad instead of what is thriving and good. I look at some of my worst relationships and think, “at least he or she didn’t hit me.” I work from a place of gratitude for the bare minimum. I’ve never been in a relationship where I’ve had to hide nonconsensual bruises. I’ve never feared for my life. I’ve never been in a situation where I couldn’t walk away. Does this make me a lucky girl? Given the stories I’ve seen women sharing via the hashtags #whyIstayed and #whyIleft, yes.

This is not how we should measure luck.

I have had good relationships but it’s hard to trust that because what I consider good sometimes doesn’t feel very good at all.

Or I am thinking about testimony and how there has been so much over the past day and some–women sharing their truths, daring to use their voices to say, “This is what happened to me. This is how I have been wronged.” I’ve been thinking about how so much testimony is demanded of women and still, there are those who doubt our stories. There are those who think we are all lucky girls because we are still, they narrowly assume, alive.

I am weary of all our sad stories–not hearing them, but that we have these stories to tell, that there are so many.

The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was being born a woman.

The braver I am, the luckier I get.

How to get lucky:

Consider a wide-open field with someone hurling darts at a dartboard.

Every one that lands is an opportunity seized.

But most fields have a terrible thrower aiming at a small dartboard.

The lucky people recruit 100 throwers and build a bigger dartboard.

That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.

Back when I was lucky,

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

I always thought that luck was a result of hard work, and the only way you're going to get lucky is if you're at the desk on Friday afternoon in August and the phone rings and you get the call and it's a developer who's building a project that needs your help. If you're working, if you're there, if you're in the game, if you stay engaged and involved, that's how people get lucky. Luck doesn't just happen to people. They have to make it happen. And it's in everybody's power, I think, to get lucky.

It is obviously unbelievable, completely surreal but also absolutely humbling. I can’t believe that I am so lucky, but also I sit in total gratitude for sitting, arriving and being at a place that proves that all the work, all the dedication, and all of the persistence has paid off

I now cherish the ability to be surprised by things that come up unexpectedly, by beautiful things and new perspectives that emerge out of the blue, even in the most conventional and repetitive settings. The ability to be surprised surprises me.