Just as I was coming into puberty, just as all the passion of life was getting ready to flood into my body—bringing hormones, dreams for the future, and revelations of the spirit—my mother taught me the most important lesson of my life.
She sat down next to me on my bed, signaling this was a ‘mom and me’ talk, the most serious kind. “There might come a day,” she began pensively, “when you feel like you can’t go on.” I furrowed my eyebrows quizzically.
