I’m channeling my 85-year-old dad here with the “if I had a nickel for every time” line, but truly – if I did have a nickel for every good thing that has come into my life because of my writing, I’d be rich in nickels. 

I’d also have a heavy jar of them for every time someone has asked me why I choose to share some of the most difficult and vulnerable parts of my life publicly.

The truth is, I’ve spent much of my life being pretty terrible with emotions. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I learned early that staying quiet made me less of a responsibility. It was just easier. But eventually, I learned that that kind of silence has its own cost: I paid a heavy physical price for it.

That toll still terrifies me. So, when I first started writing about the hard parts, it definitely wasn’t out of bravery or generosity. It was for my own survival. At first, I thought maybe if I could put the pain somewhere outside of myself, on the page, it would stop gnawing at me from within. (Spoiler alert: It didn’t.) And I thought that maybe there were others out there like me. Just trying to make it all mean something. (Spoiler alert: There were.)

Writing seemed like a way to finally let my emotions breathe. Speaking them out loud has felt impossible since I was a kid — like they’re too tangled, or raw. But on the page, they could take shape naturally. And writing eventually became like my own secret coping mechanism — the place where feelings I couldn’t name could finally find a voice.

So often throughout my life I haven’t known what I was feeling. I couldn’t even name it — until I would see it written down. Over time, I started to realize that maybe writing wasn’t just expression for me — that it was actually practice. Practice in honesty. In courage. In admitting what I feel – and letting myself feel it. And in learning how to live with my heart open, even when it scared me. (Spoiler alert: Still learning.)

I think there is a secret economy in vulnerability that we don’t talk enough about. You think you’re giving something away. Your trembling words. Your unvarnished truths. Diary pages you dared to publish. But, my God, what has come back to me is so much more than I could have imagined.

And the gifts are never abstract. They’ve arrived in the form of people with shining eyes whose tears are for the recognition of themselves in something I’ve said. People carrying their own burdens, searching for a way forward. People who lean in because they’ve traveled that terrain once too and they recognize the struggle. People who are trying to piece a life back together after earth-shattering events.

Most often, the people who have found their way to me are women standing at the edge of enormous change. Married women who have fallen in love with other women and are navigating the confusing, tender terrain of secrecy and longing. Women who are bracing themselves for the loss of their mothers – or who are already carrying that grief in their bones. Women — and sometimes teens — searching for proof that life, once you’ve come out, can be expansive and real and joyful.

All these messy, beautiful humans keep showing up to teach me what it means to be a meaningmaker. Together we practice holding life’s universal truths – love, grief, forgiveness, darkness, and belonging — up to the light. And in that practice, I’ve found the best kind of courage — the kind that occasionally leans in and whispers: keep going.

Because of them I’ve come to see that stories don’t have to be exhaustive or soul-baring to be powerful. Even a single honest sentence can be enough to light a lantern in the dark. Connection doesn’t require us to give away everything – just something that’s real.

Today, I have angels in my life I never would have met if I hadn’t been writing. Writing was the doorway — the way through which my own heart learned to welcome connection over the years. Through words, these good souls found their way to me. And in ways that defy language — they feel like angels I can see. I am still astonished by it. Blown away that something as fragile and ordinary as words could open into something this extraordinary.

They didn’t arrive with wings or halos, but sometimes I really do think they’re angels masquerading as humans. They remind me that courage can be born in a single moment between two souls who dare to tell one another the truth. And that when we risk connection, we sometimes find family. They’re living proof that grace doesn’t descend from the heavens. It walks among us, in human form, every day.

And that, in the end, it’s words that become wings.