I realized when he gave me the list at the age of 18 that this was an important document. And I set about learning these songs. But it took me, I think, until now to realize that he was really giving me himself, a part of his heart and soul.
I was reflecting a lot on my 20s when I left university and when I didn't really have a real direction in life, when a lot of my friends were going off to other things and it felt like a lot of people were moving on without me. It was easy at that time to feel completely alone.
When I um read Walden when I was a freshman in high school, I was just sort of like transcendentalism. This is like this is what I want wanted to do my whole life. I wanted to transcend how people see me because I was assigned male at birth and because I'm black and poor in the South. I want to transcend this body. I want to transcend like time and space. And I finally had a word um for what I longed to do and what I felt like I was here to do.
I think we're wired to do hard things. And that's kind of perverse, but you know, the marathon has become one of the great bucket list items. I think people get something real out of pushing limits they didn't know that they had.
The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness, you know? And that was a word and a feeling that I think I didn't know was what I was looking for.
6mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
