When I saw the Los Angeles fires creep toward my house, I knew I had to pack an emergency bag fast.

• I grabbed the essentials, but then I remembered I needed to take photos of my birth mother with me.

• That's when I learned nothing I've ever purchased is as important to me as I thought.

Grieving, healing, and changing the story I tell myself.

Gloria died 29 years ago tomorrow, one day before my birthday. She couldn’t take one more year of that day. Such is the pain of relinquishing a child, of birthing a human and surrendering it to strangers.

Moving beyond the fairy tale narrative.

We walk along the sandy beach, the four of us. My biological father, his second wife, my husband, me. Low tide pulls the Brewster Bay water so far out, it looks like we could walk to the end of the earth.

Lauri Carleton was a vital member of my community.

I’m sitting on my bed, early morning, before the sun and the neighbor’s yappy dog awaken, before storm clouds move in. I’m tracking Hurricane Hilary’s path from Mexico to my home in Los Angeles. Cool. I’m in the “high risk of flooding” zone.

I had never before felt so totally, completely, utterly, present.

I didn’t plan on microdosing psilocybin — a certain type of mushroom. I mean, I didn’t say I need something else, something more.

Viktor Frankl, finding meaning, getting through.

I’m sitting on my bed, still groggy, under-rested, over-caffeinated; legs outstretched on crumpled white sheets and a grey blanket sprinkled with dog hair and gluten free pretzel crumbs. I want to be one of those people who never eats in bed, irons their sheets (has them ironed by someone else!) but I’m not, never will be. Whatever.

I wasn’t a bad writer. It was a broken system.

I was ecstatic. After 5 years of trying to make it — of starts and stops and almosts and we’re sorry, buts — a major Hollywood studio hired my partner and me to write an original television movie.

Small thoughts for big feelings.

My son and I drive the few blocks to the synagogue in pained silence. There are no words for driving to the funeral of a young man who took his own life. Too young. Too soon. I park on the street, knowing the parking lot will be full. Knowing hundreds of people will show up for this shattered family.

Part 2.

1972. I’m sitting on the padded peeling black leather seat, bumping up and down in the little yellow school bus as it traverses pot holes with poor shock absorbers. My raincoat is translucent, crisscrossed with red plaid, my soft brown curls pulled into pigtails. The bus pulls into the Robin Hill Nursery School parking lot; it parks, and the bus driver sings a song to accompany our exit. I interrupt her. “I’m better than everyone else because I’m adopted. My parents chose me. Your parents were forced to keep you.”

Lessons on love and letting go.

6:40 am. Scrolling the internet, sipping coffee, procrastinating packing. I’m visiting my daughter, 24, now living 3,000 miles away. An amazing weekend together. Laughing, talking, long walks in the park.

“How about I stay a little longer?”

“I would love that.”

So here I am, a little longer later, ready to leave, wanting to stay. Let this be the moment of remembering. How grateful I am to love and be loved. To be needed and wanted.

What I learned when my kids said college wasn’t for them.

The other day, I saw this bumper sticker. Raise Good Humans. Crisp white font on a plain black background. Its simplicity stunned me, shuttled me back in time.

On a cold day in January I tried to kill myself. I was 16. I sat at my kitchen table and poured out a bottle of Tylenol, or maybe Advil, I don’t think we had Advil in 1984 so it must have been Tylenol. I sat at my yellow formica kitchen table, fluorescent bulbs flickering overhead, and swallowed one pill at a time.

This week was my 26th wedding anniversary. Twenty-six years with the same man and my conclusion is this: the success of my marriage comes down to luck. Luck we didn’t want to divorce at the same time, luck the money returned after it ran out, luck the near fatal illnesses didn’t win, luck a bus hasn’t run us over. Luck our kids made it to young adulthood alive and intact, luck we have good health insurance, access to mental health services, supportive friends and family. Luck the vision we shared decades ago remains shared. Luck we still like sex, and each other.

The Unfair Cruelty of Secrecy.

Exhausted, sweaty, jet lagged and anxious, I got off the elevator with no idea where to go so I turned left and wow, there was my mother at the end of the long, antiseptic hallway. Her tiny body — four feet, eight inches — and gleaming white hair, gripping a walker, a tall nurse walking beside her.

Okay well, in retrospect, the bottle of pills, the tablets of Tylenol poured out on the yellow formica kitchen table, swallowed slowly, methodically, one by one, was a little misguided. 16. So young, empty, so afraid. I wish I had words back then, that cold January day so long ago when I wanted to die.

How mine changed my life.

It’s 1996, I’m 27, and my soon-to-be mother-in-law requests the time and place of my birth to have my astrological chart done. Sun sign, rising sign, are you good enough for my son sign. She is a stunning Brit with fiery red hair and an upper crust accent that sends my shoulders back and my spine straight. I am desperate to please her.

How mine changed my life.

It’s 1996, I’m 27, and my soon-to-be mother-in-law requests the time and place of my birth to have my astrological chart done

Stop weaponizing adoptees for political gain- Have you ever vented to a friend about how your parents’ divorce fucked you up, and the friend said something like, “at least you have a roof over your head” or “no one else I know is fucked up from divorce?”

Probably not.

So practice forgiving yourself.

It won’t be your kid because you read the books and took Lamaze and gave them baths, you made their dinners and rubbed their backs and came home in time and did the work. It won’t be your kid because the school was good and piano lessons and dance classes and baseball and soccer and birthday parties. You’re a doctor, a lawyer, your nanny is great and the grandparents are close and it won’t be your kid because they don’t do that. Whatever that is. It won’t be your kid because you searched their room, or swear you don’t need to. It won’t be your kid because of a backyard swing set and the best pediatrician and college counselor and you read the books again and again and again.

Hate is harder when we see each other’s humanity.

It was 1987, my freshman year at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The First Intifada had just begun. Young Arabs with keffiyehs around their necks stood at a long table near the cafeteria’s exit, a Palestinian flag hanging behind them.

“Sign the petition! Free Palestine!”