Nothing matters more in this life than how you see yourself and how you see others. When I first met your dad, I had only a few years' practice in seeing the good in myself. Up until then, I had lived my life with a crippling fear of impending doom. Something was always coming to get me because—the prevailing messages insisted—I was inherently evil and prone to wickedness.

How we see human nature is directly connected to how "workable" life's hardest situations appear. If we see ourselves as fundamentally flawed, doomed to fail or on the fast track to damnation, this sends a harmful message that reverberates in every area of our existence. It implies that because we are made of badness at the core of who we are, then bad things and bad behaviors are naturally at home in us—almost as if they're unavoidable. It sends a message that we are somehow conditioned and inclined and supposed to be lonely, afraid, mistreated, yelled at, depressed, talked down to, neglected, ridiculed and so forth.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I had to unlearn as an adult. About how life was presented to me in such rigid absolutes that it crippled my inner creativity and confidence. I've been thinking about how much I want to give my daughter an expansive, open world that doesn't need to be feared or labeled or tied down.

I've also been wondering how much of what has settled into the cave of my heart will be transformed once I bring a baby home from the hospital. It's possible that everything I am trying to write down will prove to be foolish and quite laughable once I have joined the ranks of the chronically sleep deprived. So perhaps, at a minimum, we'll all get a good laugh out of what I think is worth writing down today. Regardless of whether or not I am foolish, this is the work of a woman who's in a contemplative phase of life after decades of inner upheaval.