Are any of our choices made in complete isolation from the choices of others, for good or for ill? Can anyone be solely responsible for his or her successes or failures? Wouldn’t it be more truthful to acknowledge that people cannot solely navigate their lives as either helpless victims or solitary warriors? In the end, these sorts of philosophical questions are asked only by people who are standing. Once you’ve fallen, it doesn’t matter how you got there. You just want to get up. You long for someone to help you, to take you by the hand, to lift you up, and to walk with you so that you won’t fall again.

While the first three years of my life were spent in a protective, loving home, my sister Tricia’s must have been hell.