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I thought I was pretty damn smart. Smart about myself, I mean. For over 40 years I’ve been working as a psychologist and that means thousands of people. Thousands of people with rich family dynamics to explore. Together we dug around, examined, looked at things from every conceivable angle, lifted every rock. And when you’re doing that with someone else, it’s inevitable that you subject yourself to the same scrutiny. Truth is, I believe that most of us who get into this field to begin with are motivated, at least in part, by a deep need to understand ourselves and our family dynamics. Along with time spent with clients, I’ve had years of work with my own therapists, and endless hours mulling it all over with my sister, with my friends. I had ruthlessly interviewed myself. Scrutinized every wacky family interaction. I had most definitely led an examined life...

When I was six, my dad signed me up for a marine biology class at the community college. There were courses available to elementary school kids on Saturday mornings. The old Hardie Building was just a few blocks from the ocean in Beverly, MA. I remember walking down to the beach to collect seawater for an experiment. I liked beachcombing along the way because the instructor would tell true stories about the things we stumbled across, like that mermaid purses weren’t just an extension of a dried up, pile of seaweed. They were egg cases for small sharks.

When we got the seawater back to the school, we boiled it in a beaker until all that was left in the glass was salt. I can’t imagine we were allowed to taste it in a laboratory, but somehow I ate it. And my mind was blown...

Every evening, the limbs of the frangipani tree that shaded our second story apartment shivered and rustled, strewing star shaped blossoms onto our balcony’s floor. Balmy lake breezes mixed the petals’ thick perfume with the aromas of brewing coffee and fried snacks wafting from our neighbors' kitchen windows. In the distance, auto rickshaws and motorcycles revved their engines, announcing the start of Bangalore’s evening commute.  

The minute I heard the creaking branches, I'd stop what I was doing and come outside. Leaning over the balcony’s wrought iron railing, I smiled and waved at the black-haired girl who was, inevitably, perched somewhere on the tree’s trunk, her bare feet tight against the rough bark, her long fingers plucking flowers. 

“Namaskara, Varuna,” I’d call out. “Hege ideera? How are you?”...

I woke early on our first morning on Kaua‘i. Early, because I always have a hard time sleeping my first night in any new bed, and early because my body was two hours ahead, on Portland time. I started a pot of Kona coffee and opened the curtains to the lanai. In Portland, the sun had already risen, but I knew it was still dark, cold, wet — the 45th parallel in February. In the tropics, darkness faded into purple and gray shadows, revealing the outline of swaying palms. The peculiar physics of the condo’s location on C-shaped Keoniloa Bay meant that, somehow, you could see the sun both rise and set, dawn to dusk, beginning then ending then beginning again. 

My back and legs hurt from being crammed into an airplane seat the previous day, and my arm and neck from the accident that totaled my car three months earlier...

It happened when Michael Corleone saw Apollonia Vitelli for the first time in The Godfather. Thunderstruck. He just knew. It was a light bulb flick, the eureka moment when everything else melts away and you’re faced with an unexpected future — if you accept the challenge.
 
Several years ago, in a museum in London, I was gobsmacked by an idea that hit me as I stared at portraits of trailblazing women from the 18th century. They reminded me of my own unconventional mother, a woman who had skirted the rules all her life, concocting her own version of womanhood — and motherhood — in the same determined manner. I suddenly knew that I had to learn more about them and then write about her. 
 
I had begun untangle our complex mother-daughter relationship during another trip to London the year before. More than 20 years after her death, I was still caught in a wrenching cycle of love and longing for the larger-than-life, extraordinarily beautiful woman...

Eight years ago I was standing on the subway in New York City, leaning on a pole, with eight different boxes of candy taped together, trying to sell it to anyone who would hear me out. If you would have told me that I would have written a book, opened four restaurants, and appeared on national television by now, I would have called you crazy. But why is that crazy? Why do we think that the possible is impossible? I think there are many answers to that question. Our path and the people we surround ourselves with contribute to that for sure. We measure success by the most successful person we know. The only way to change that perspective is by growth and getting out of that comfort zone. Now, I am not saying to just stop what you’re doing and go straight into something with no training. But taking that next step without knowing where it may lead you is key...

For many years now I have been studying, writing, and thinking about what environmental justice means for Indigenous peoples. In my most recent book, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice From Colonization to Standing Rock, I take on the topic in very broad but specific ways. I see United States settler colonialism as a history of environmental injustice; in other words, colonization and environmental injustice go hand in hand for Native people.

In general, the field of environmental justice (EJ) refers to injustice as the ways people of color are disproportionately exposed to toxic development and other processes that place them at higher risk of illness and other attendant harms (such as lower property values and gentrification). EJ is based on the concept of environmental racism...

A quick warning: this essay discusses mental health and suicidal ideation, and may be upsetting to some readers. 

I know what to expect from myself. I just don’t know when. Allow me to explain: for as long as I can remember, my life has been marked by cycles of depression and anxiety that swap in and out seemingly at random. They are as familiar to me as my heartbeat at this point, and yet they still find new ways to annihilate months of my life at a time, leaving me scrambling to meet my deadlines and handle the basic responsibilities of adulthood. Even on my good days, they’re not gone, just more distant, a dull roar in the back of my mind waiting for the next opportunity to get louder. 

There is a myth — a prevalent, dangerous, beautiful myth — that success, however you define it, will be the thing that fixes all your problems...

My new novel, Stay Up With Hugo Best, is set in the world of late night comedy. It follows a young writer’s assistant and the host of a popular show as they spend a weekend together after the show’s cancellation. When people hear about it, they often assume that I lived it, or that I embedded with a late night staff, shadowing a page or an assistant, sitting in on the writer’s room. When I tell them I did neither I can see their disappointment. It’s less exciting to have read books I ordered from the library. Less glamorous that I listened to comedy albums and interviewed people over the phone.
 
It’s daunting, too, attempting to write about a subculture of which you are not a part. There are several challenges, chief among them getting things wrong...

I thought I was lucky that I could be that visible and not be physically hurt. That was my benchmark: being allowed to exist. I look back and I think, I really was lucky, and I also look back and think, What a bummer. What standards trans people set themselves for lucky.

Anyway. There was a gay and lesbian section at Powell’s on the second floor. By default I’m an extroverted goon, but I spoke to the clerk in a church mouse voice: “Do you have a… a… a… transgender section?” And what a fucking world, they did! Three rows of books in the bottom of gay and lesbian shelf, all dedicated to trans people. Oh man, fucking jackpot. I spent an hour looking through every book in the section. 

And I was giddy and disappointed, but I couldn’t articulate the latter...