Essence Jones wanted to be a boxer since he was two years old.
“I ‘member telling my dad I wanted to box, I liked boxing. I’d say ‘Dad, take me to the gym so I can learn to box,” he said. “But he was all into drugs and alcohol so he never had the time to take me.”
Fifteen years later however Jones found the boxing lessons and opportunity he wanted - in a prison yard. An altercation involving a girlfriend, a friend and a gun brought him eight years of …

Rock stars, actors and writers, by their very nature, seem to be among those most willing to endure homelessness in pursuit of better things. I think creative people recognize the fact that homelessness is a place on our path, and not our destiny. I strongly believe that. For some, homelessness and life on the streets may be THEIR destiny, but it is not the iron-clad destiny of everyone who IS homeless. Just ask (if you could) one of America’s Founding Fathers - Alexander Hamilton.
Born out of wedlock and orphaned at …

Affection delayed is not always affection denied.
He sounds old and his voice is tired. It’s been fifteen years since I’ve heard it, but it’s definitely him.
I am caught in that melodramatic made-for-television moment where I learn that my estranged father is dying of brain cancer and I have only - days? weeks? months? - to “set things right” between us.
I have to laugh. I’m a writer, and I never would have dreamed up such a trite, overdone scenario. But here I am, actually living it. It gets better: I get …

If you begin to face your fears, something bittersweet is going to happen to you: You’ll grow up. You’ll lose your dependency on the grown-ups of the world because you’ll realize that there is no time, no age, at which fear suddenly fades and you become one of these impervious beings…Fear is the raw material from which courage is manufactured. Without it, we wouldn’t even know what it means to be brave.—Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live

I love Martha Beck’s …