ACCORDING TO ZAC

For a minute there, I was mad at my therapist. Not for a breach of confidence or any other kind of unprofessional behavior. No, I was mad at him because he’s right, and he has been for the better part of the three years I’ve been working with him. Change is hard, and the process to develop personally can be grueling. But even if I was mad, it’s not lost on me how lucky I am that I’ve got a trained professional to help me through it all. Most remarkable about what I’m realizing isn’t that this guy has been right all along—I knew he had credentials and a wealth of experience at the outset—it’s that he has allowed this process to be mine , even if it probably (certainly) prolonged the outcome. He has let me move at the pace that’s appropriate for me, even though the path through this maze has probably looked pretty clear from his vantage point. While the endpoint, the goal of getting through this maze, was why I started working with him, the fact that he didn’t dictate anything has meant ...

The power is out at my house right now, and I'm using my cell phone as a hotspot to type this up. The storm made me think of Mom and how much she liked the monsoons that would roll in off the mountains in the east every summer. I wish I could tell her about it—the darkness in the house, using the flashlight I got for Christmas (she always had a MAG Lite somewhere), that I brought my kalanchoe plant inside so it wouldn't get too beat up. Here's a few other things I wish I could tell Mom: We're doing alright, and I think you'd be proud of us. I really love to sing, and I wish I hadn't wasted so much time being nervous to sing in front of you. You set an incredible example for me in church, and I have tried so hard to magnify every calling the way you would have. I still work in higher ed. I don't love every day at my job, but you can't beat the people or the benefits! (But there are days like today that I do really like what I do.) You never got enough cre...

The loss of a parent in a person's life is going to be pretty profound. Even if that person didn't have a strong connection with his or her parent, a mom/dad gives you half of who you are by genes alone. You can't escape that—they helped make you! It's even harder if you loved that parent and were close. I've been thinking about my mom a lot over the last few months, and it's been surprisingly tumultuous. The first six or eight months after she died, I would have a few good days and then be struck suddenly with grief and sadness. And yes, I obviously missed her always , and still do, but the shock and hurt would come and go. It would hit me in random moments and with surprising intensity while I made sense of the fact that she's really gone, not just on a trip or something. Those feelings of intense sadness had mostly faded, and nostalgia and slight longing are what persisted. It was a dull ache that was definitely livable. The last few months, however...

Cheryl Strayed  is a writer and generally interesting human being from what I've been able to glean from the little I know about her. She wrote a memoir called Wild  that was then adapted into a major motion picture starring everybody's sweetheart, Reese Witherspoon. Though I haven't read her memoir, I have read synopses of her memoir (and accompanying film). She has led an interesting life, full of passion, struggle, despair and joy, among many other things. One thing she has had to deal with is losing her mother. Cheryl was in her 20s, if I remember correctly, and her mother was only 45. It was a crushing blow to her. Now, many years later, she has compiled a series of her most insightful tidbits about life when she was working as an anonymous advice columnist named Sugar. My lovely friend Kristina sent me this book in the weeks after my mother's death in November 2014, hoping that it would help me find ways of coping with my recent tragedy and be able to move for...

(Context: my wonderful mother passed away in early November 2014 from cancer. The diagnosis a year previously had been shocking, but her decline was not. That has been one of many sources of great emotion over the last year. This entry will be about coping with the loss of her, but it could very well be applied to the setbacks we face in life, whether self-inflicted or otherwise.) Life is such a crazy thing. The range of emotions I have felt in the last year or so would take days to explain completely, and the emotions I've felt in the last few days alone have had me up and down. Fortunately enough, I started going through old journal entries this afternoon and I found one that was really encouraging. Last March I had just finished reading a silly book called Allegiant . There were a lot of things I didn't like about the book, but if there was anything redeeming at all about the hundreds of pages I read it was the core message delivered at the very end: "We can be...

I've had a few long talks with friends and family lately about the decline in my mother's health. It's hard to see someone that taught me and supported me  be so bogged down by a terrible illness. It makes my heart hurt. Tonight a thought came to my mind that hadn't really occurred to me previously -- what is going to happen if I am still living at home when my mother passes? I feel like my dad and I are going to feel so lost inside of this place without her. I've never known this place without her watchful eye. But while that is so painful to think of my dad and I being lonely in this house, aching for her return, a sweet thought came to mind -- where she goes next will not be a painful place. She will be made whole because of the Savior's sacrifice. She will be reunited with her own mother, who she loved so much. It doesn't need to be as sad as we make it. That attitude is hard to keep continually, but I try to soak it all in when it's here, because it...

I cry when I least expect it. I was coming to the end of Mockingjay , a hopeless, gory and depressing book. It offers no sense of realism in any way shape or form. Katniss spent the whole book in a stupor, actively trying not to cope with everything going on in her life. After months of denial and struggle, she comes to and decides to pick herself up and get on with life -- it's really the only viable option for anyone, anywhere. And that's where it started: She began writing down the details of the people she loved dearly but had tragically lost in the war against the oppressive government: the details of a person's laugh, the color of her friend's eye, or the kindness of someone she had grown up with. All of a sudden she was human again, and it struck a chord. I'm a detail-oriented person when it comes to personal interactions and relationships. As Katniss brought these details forward to prevent them from ever being forgotten, I thought about how much I do...