A friend recently told me about a colleague she had come to consider a close friend. His wife had died tragically just a few months earlier. When she went to visit him, he invited her to spend the night. She was shocked. How could a man still grieving the woman he loved already be seeking intimacy with someone else? I listened and was struck less by his invitation than by the horror it provoked in her. As though desire were a betrayal of the dead, as though grief demanded loy

We smile when all we want to do is cry. We say yes when every fiber of our being is screaming no. We anticipate other people's needs before they even voice them. We monitor their moods, carefully choose our words, and go out of our way to avoid anything that might provoke their anger or disapproval. We become the person who understands it all, excuses everything, forgives everything. The one who asks for practically nothing, for fear of being a burden. And little by little, w

From the Full Moon in Aries to the New Moon in Libra This story came to me a few days before the full moon in Aries, as I prepared for a rite of passage: thirty-six hours of fasting and solitude in the forest, under the moon’s light. I published nothing then. The story had been born, but it needed time to mature. Mars, the ruler of that full moon, was at 29° Cancer, living his initiation in the heart of his tribe. The story was ripening in the same way before it could go out