About a minute after B and I broke up, I bought Pema Chodron’s  The Places that Scare You. In it she says something like, “We are all in transition all the time. Sometimes it’s just more obvious than others.” Well, the truth of transition was feeling fucking obvious to me right then.

For seven years I’d had a pretty consistent, stable, and contented life. It was the longest amount of time I’d spent in the same town— needless to say the same job, same partner, same bike ride (I heart Clinton Avenue!!), same day-to-day rhythms— since high school graduation twenty years ago!

Of course, within the “sameness” there was always transition. There was starting a writing studio, making new friends, hiking up mountains and down rivers, the death of one of my dearest friends, babies born, Poekoelan tests, meals that started with raw vegetables and ended in pizza.

And all those…