I've had a book rolling around inside of me for the past 10 years, but there were things that I needed to learn before I could begin. There were questions whose answers I needed to live before I could pick up my pen. Suddenly and slowly I feel like maybe I have something to say. 

Whatever else it might be, it is a story about rebuilding and remaking yourself as many times as you need to because every life is yours if you are the one living it. It's about dreaming and choosing a new dream. It might be about giving up. And about how journeying and how if it really does matter more than the destination, it's ok if the destination changes...even if it changes frequently. It's also about prophecy and the way some truths resonate in your bones. About knowledge, how it changes you, and what you do with it. It might be about the role of the prophet and how there is never one around when you need one the most because so many important truths are by nature inconvenient. It might be about growing up. Not about a youth becoming an adult, but rather about transforming from one adult into a different adult and all the sacrifice and blessing therein. 

I want to write the kind of book that could be a metaphor my younger self might understand about the future and how it doesn't always go as planned even if you have a very good plan and are a very nice person. Sometimes the world tilts sideways.Sometimes you get handed loaded dice. Sometimes you have to make choices with far reaching consequences based on nothing more than a hunch. Sometimes your dream threatens to destroy you. None of this is making sense. But I'm writing a story for my younger self so she'll know that when everything goes wrong, it's not her fault and even though she has to build a new set of wings fast, she will do it. I'm writing because I drank stories in like water. I used them to raise myself and make a definition of success that few around me shared and I wish that I had known more. But only a little more.

I wish I had known that sometimes people choose to be your enemy for no reason other than they need an obstacle to overcome. I wish I had known that you are not going to win over those people and that it's ok to tell them to F* off especially when they try to ruin your life for God knows what reason. I wish I had known that being very good at guessing the future won't save you from the unknown. I wish I had known that rebuilding is a skill that everyone expects you to have but no one teaches. I wish I knew anyone who could speak on the paradox of celebrating successes that you've found even as you grieve the Dream you didn't achieve. There are not enough hands to hold all of the complexities of human experience.