I see your fear, and it's big. I also see your courage and it's bigger. We can do hard things, baby. We are fireproof. - Glennon Doyle

I'll not abandon myself. Not ever again. Me and myself: We are till death do us part. We'll forsake all others to remain whole. I unbecame a woman who believed that another would complete me when I decided that I was born complete.

If you let yourself shatter and then you put yourself back together, piece by piece, you wake up one day and realize that you have been completely reassembled. You are whole again, and strong, but you are suddenly a new shape, a new size. The change that happens to people who really sit in their pain — whether it's a sliver of envy lasting an hour or a canyon of grief lasting decades — it's revolutionary. When that kind of transformation happens, it becomes impossible to fit into your old conversations or relationships or patterns or thoughts or life anymore. You are like a snake trying to fit back into old, dead skin or a butterfly trying to crawl back into its cocoon. You look around and see everything freshly, with the new eyes you have earned for yourself. There is no going back. Perhaps the only thing that makes grief any easier is to surrender completely to it.

Since it doesn't use words to explain itself to me, I quit using words to explain myself to the world. This is the most revolutionary thing a woman can do: the next precise thing, one thing at a time, without asking permission or offering explanation. This way of life is thrilling.