I read somewhere that transformation—an internal change that women experience—is a part of reinvention.

Women’s friends and family will notice the transformation. They will wonder what is different about them.

I am in a daydream: the sun shines even amidst the gray clouds hanging in the sky—I go out to ride my bike even if I am going to get wet. Slogging rain off me, I sit at a table drinking tea. Finding a version of myself that moves.

My brother died in November.

While I had talked to him more recently over the last year, I hadn’t seen him more than a few times in the last twenty years. We weren’t close and I thought maybe I didn’t even know him. When I found out he died, I didn’t cry. I just went back to sleep.

For years, I believed that staying in motion was how I kept myself safe.

I lay awake in bed most nights, replaying and rehearsing hard and unpleasant conversations in my head, cataloguing my points and chastising myself when I forget them.