Think of the last piece of criticism that genuinely stung. Not the unfair one — the unfair ones are easy; you dismiss those by lunchtime. I mean the one that stayed. The sentence you were still turning over three days later, at a red light, for no reason you could name. Here’s the uncomfortable part….

It’s a quiet evening. My phone buzzes on the table, face up, and I read it before I’ve decided whether I want to. I think we should end this. Six words. No preamble, no argument that led there, nothing I could point to and say — ah, that’s where it went. I remember the texture…

The four steps of recovering from a failure — and the one almost all of us fake. Watch a child learning to walk. Really watch, next time you get the chance — there’s something in it that took me years to understand. She’s standing in the middle of the room, knees locked, arms out like…