“Forgiveness does not mean I approve of or condone what transpired.”

“Through each crisis in my life, with acceptance and hope, in a single defining moment, I finally gained the courage to do things differently.”

“Most of all, I remember her laughing. It filled my ears. Her smile, her sparkling eyes, and her infectious laughter, along with the vistas, were limitless and unending and powerful.”

“By first grade, my sense of worth was in direct proportion to what I learned and what I contributed back to the class. I had already become a human doing instead of a human being.”

“With each opportunity before me, God presented me with a choice. I could accept His offerings, His wisdom, His grace. Or I could choose to hold onto the pain, the anger and the resentment a little longer.”

“Life is messy. Grit and grace come at us fast, side by side. Sometimes the grit becomes overwhelming and diminishes our spirit. What’s good seems lost and gone forever. This is a story about the pathway back to what’s beautiful, when the way back seems impossible.”

“I did the only thing I knew how to do: I built my own walls of silence to disguise my desperation and what later came to be recognized and diagnosed as depression.”

“I thought by masking the depression with silence, the feelings might disappear.”

“I’m not ‘different’ from anyone else. Crises and tough emotional periods are the grit around which my inner self has been formed. Some, I have come through with more grace than others.”

“I had to clear up my messy life. By letting go of the debris and filth, I have come to a deeper, more soulful beauty and clarity like an oasis in the desert. From that place of clarity, a vision of what I could have, what I could do, who I could be has emerged if I allow my heart to become a place of compassion, acceptance and forgiveness.”

“This is where life as I knew it changed. This is where a new feeling slowly, eventually, permeated every cell of my body, changing the way I took in the world. My perceptions, opinions, everything changed the year I moved from Texas to Virginia.”