1. What would you change, if anything, about our experience growing up? 2. What do you admire most about Mom and/or Dad? 3. In what ways did Mom or Dad let you down? 4. What's something you wish you could have told me when we were kids? Why didn't you tell me then? 5. How could I have been a better sibling to you when we were growing up? 6. What's your favorite childhood memory of us?
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I want to see the world, experience different cultures and give myself space to reflect on what I really want in life. Lately, though, whenever I bring up this idea to friends or family, they tell me it's irresponsible. They worry I'll fall behind in my career or lose my momentum in such a competitive industry. Some even say I'm being selfish for stepping away from a stable job when others are struggling to find one.
"I had enough money but not enough time." That's what my stepmom said, multiple times through her two-decade journey with metastatic breast cancer.
"I'm the type of person who, if I'm happy, everybody in the room is going to be happy, and if I'm sad, it's going to be very quiet and tense. I'm a temperature guider in the room."
I surfed a bit. I was a gymnast as a child, so I can ride a wave no problem, except that I'm five foot three and surfboards are, I don't know, closer to six feet, so if the wrong wave ever catches me-boom-I'm dust.
I fed this woman the same line, told her a story, and quite literally waved my hands fleetingly as if running a household of four young boys and managing a traveling spouse while working full time was no big deal.
I never thought I'd put that much of myself in the film... I was very concerned at one point when we had half filmed it, and tried to get it stopped.
I had theories, of course. Looking back, these tended to change quite frequently, and yet the fear was always the same: in short, that I was dying, that I had some dreadful and no doubt painful disease.
Through the years, I admired my married friends and their strong relationships with their children, and harbored a quiet yearning for that type of sharing and love, but I wasn't going to do it on my own.