The Gift of Failure
One of my best friends from college, a remarkable and talented artist, gave me a journal that she made for me the day before she left the Appalachian mountains for Japan. Inside the journal was a letter in her scrawling handwriting, recounting our adventures and leaving me sisterly advice (along with a doodle or two). Through the tears as I sat in my car reading it, the thing that struck me the most was her wish that…