I know now that I cannot escape making mistakes, and I know that I will never stop making mistakes, not until I die.

I also know that my mistakes nourish and feed and guide me; they are like mushrooms’ seeds, mistakes sprout, and grow. They can nourish me as well as discourage me. Things come apart and then together faster than I can see or cope.

From typos to broken friendships and bad judgments, my mistakes define me and shape me. I see them as my seeds, if planted, they will gr

I do not let them defeat me.

In spite of many ingrained limitations and wounds, I always grow back and heal, surpassing more than what was lost.

I have failed and been broken many times, I sometimes feel that I have lived more than my share of lives; I feel both young and old at the same time.

I’ve hidden from my mistakes and been ashamed of them so many times.

My sense of identity has sprouted and shrunk and finally come to shine in the sun like an old cactus waiting for a drop of rain.

No one ever told me about mistakes, that dogs die, and people fail, and the human heart peels like an onion. I think these are things I had to learn for myself.

The human miracle – my miracle – is that shame and fear kept me from drinking truth instead of lies and worry.

I don’t know what kept me coming back, and keeps me coming back still, just as I make mistakes still.

In his “Book Of Awakening,” Mark Nepo writes of his mistakes…” and whatever keeps us coming back, coming up, whatever makes us build a home out of straw, out of heartache, out of nothing, whatever ignites us to see again for the very first time, this is the bluish flame that keeps the Earth grinding to the sun.”

I think the human heart sings loudest when left open. I am bigger than my mistakes.