“As soon as your passions are turned into careers, you risk turning love into work” I watched her pace the room, tweaking and re-positioning the photos we helped her hang inside the art gallery. She stood back, studied the images from a couple vantage points and made a few more adjustments. The gallery was the culmination of a year’s work and the following week the show would be open to the public. This was her baby, and she was preparing for her moment. Kerri had become a close friend over the last few years ever since I first interviewed her for a magazine article about her inclusive, growing state-wide project…

It comes in waves, but they’re painful and smothering. Sometimes I have really good days and feel happy, but a part of me feels irreparably damaged no matter what I do to try to feel otherwise. It would be nice to wake up and feel relief, but it does not happen. Why was I so foolish to let people into my life, to give them my heart? What made me think that was at last a good idea to let my guard down? Shouldn’t I have known it would leave me even more crippling lonely than I was previously? I went from a fun, confident, extrovert to a timid introvert…

Sometimes our smallest decisions hold the greatest power. Unbeknownst to us, they can change our own lives or the lives of someone else forever