“When Grief comes knocking, answer the door. Let her in.

Let her tell you all that was lost. Let her remind you how marvelous it was. Let her paint your memories in slow motion, let her sing your story with a cello. Let her teach you gratefulness and how to pay attention. Do not turn her away at the door. If you do, she will come back again knocking.”

I don’t think it’s meaningless, the story that says God sculpted us from clay. Of all the things He made, humankind was the first that He touched. The first breath we tasted was His exhale. I don’t think it’s meaningless that the first time humanity looked up at the eyes of God, His hands were dirty and He was close.

The morning I got divorced, my dad met me outside the courthouse with a half smile and a squeeze, “You’re happy, you just don’t know it yet.”

I had imagined that I would walk into the courtroom like J. Lo in some girl-power movie. I would stand with square shoulders and sharp eyes; dignified and articulate and lovely. But the truth is I could barely stand at all.

I don’t remember most of Autumn, because I lost my mind late in the summer and for a long time after that, I wasn’t in my body. I was a lightbulb buzzing somewhere far.

After the doctor told me I was dying, and after the man I married said he didn’t love me anymore, I chased a miracle in California and sixteen weeks later, I got it. The cancer was gone. But when my brain caught up with it all, something broke.

There is a Jamaican woman I know, with rivers on her face, who tells the story of God. In the very beginning, there was a vast and damp emptiness. The world was without form, and void. Only darkness in every direction. Sounds a lot like my world. Maybe like yours.

Two days before my 29th birthday, I made a clay bowl on a potter’s wheel. I found that it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at it, one wrong move can make a carefully crafted piece suddenly unrecognizable, thudding around like a flat tire. Then the only choice you’ve got is to take the clay off and start over.