I’ve heard faith described as a muscle—something that gets stronger with use and atrophies with disuse. Difficult times, I’ve been told, will “strengthen my faith.”

It’s really so very simple to care for the writers in your life. Show them that you’re invested in them and their work. Celebrate them. Because there really is no such thing as too much good writing.

In the suburbs, it’s easy to become numb to the ways we pursue our own self-satisfaction—whether it’s through our physical house or it’s packaged as abstract nouns. All these abstract nouns (like success, meaning, purpose, and self-esteem) are contingent on the kingdom of self.

It was April of 2010. My fiancé and I were roughly two months away from our wedding day, and we were spending the weekend looking at places to stay.

I am not a mother in a biological or traditional sense. I am a mother to dreams, revolutions, and peace treaties between friends by the fire. More than that, I’m the daughter of a Mother God who is heartbroken at the injustices of our world.

Did you read the first-person accounts of women, mothers, who had made a long and difficult journey hoping to find asylum, only to have their children taken away from them?