My parents are still in love.
Weird way to open a website. Also the load-bearing fact of my entire life, so it goes first.
They came to everything. Every game. Every dream I announced at dinner. Every idea that, in hindsight, was NOT an idea. And somehow they got me believing I could be any of it — a thing I have never recovered from and don't intend to.
I was a chunky kid who wanted abs. Mom said do . I did. Two months. Nothing. She looked right at me and said, "You've got abs, honey. You just can't see them yet."
It's already possible. You're just early.
And that house was never only us. Cousins, aunts, uncles — everybody took their turn living with us. Kat's best friend spent more time at our place than her own. There are people who came through that door I call my brother, my sister. Not as a figure of speech.
Nobody sat us down and announced this as a Family Value. Door was open. Mom or Dad saw a kid who needed parenting, they parented them. That's the whole policy.
Then my mom got so good at being a mom she went and built a . More kids than just us.
Start from "of course you can." You'll be wrong sometimes, and it's still the better place to be wrong from.
Kindness isn't the soft part of this job. It's the part that gets people to tell you the truth, and the truth is the only raw material I've ever had.