It all starts with these three questions — With slippery hands gently clutched around my knees, back curled over ninety-degrees, face looking down into the scalding cement pavement, I focused on catching my breath and wiping off the ovular drops of sweat that were relay-racing from the top of my forehead down into my eyes and congregating just…

“I wish I was more willing to forgive.” — “There was blood everywhere. But wait, let me backtrack.” “This piercing voice was screaming so loudly that I could hear her from the second floor. She lives on the fourth. I’m a nurse, so when I hear somebody screeching, “Heeeeelp! Heeeeelp!” I spring into action. I jolted out of my…

Easy and fun to make the heart whole. — My childhood bedroom had never looked so bare. I recently returned home to help my parents clean before a renovation. They’d already removed so much from the room where I spent my first seventeen years, and it was now my task to go through the drawers and closets. In the…

Invest in strangers with the holy grail of rapport-building techniques. — “Guys have underestimated me my entire life and for years I never understood why — it used to really bother me. But then one day I was driving my little boy to school and I saw a quote by Walt Whitman, it was painted on the wall and it said…

Are you already catching enough fish? — There’s a word we don’t use often enough. I remember when I was little, there was this soccer trainer, Mookie. Mookie had the near impossible task of teaching twenty rambunctious adolescents how to play as a team, trust each other, and respect one another. But that didn’t faze him. In…

It’s painfully obvious. — You wake up in a panic. A scary dream concludes with the opening of your eyes. Your room is pitch black, and you clumsily smack your hand against the lamp beside your bed. You feel around long enough to find the light switch. The room slightly illuminates, and you barely…

Do what others don’t. — All loss creates distance. Losing your keys creates physical distance between you and the object. Losing your job creates distance between you and the company. Losing a loved one creates emotional distance between you and the people around you. But this doesn’t always have to be the case. When I…

For youth, E-cigarettes cannot be E-liminated. — “I took my first hit of the JUUL when I was ten. It wasn’t scary. I didn’t even understand how it could be bad for me. It felt like nothing. But, everyone in school around me was doing it, so I kept doing it. JUUL led to vaping with marijuana…

A simple story for when tasks seem too scary to even start. — A 6-year old girl was frolicking along the beach with her dad. She clutched his hand tighter each time a wave inched close to her little feet. This pattern continued for miles as the two bonded and enjoyed their time taking in the sun. About a football field away, a…