Wish You Were Here

by Renee Carlino

I believe that our energy is everywhere, even after we leave the physical world. Like our souls leave some residual imprint on the people we knew, or something.”

“Your art, our memories, the memories people have of us . . . it makes us immortal. When you love someone, whether it be your family, friends, partners, whatever, it’s like planting a little seedling of yourself inside of their hearts.”

We spend so much of our teen years and twenties fundamentally rejecting our parents’ philosophies. I’m talking about that period between fifteen and your late twenties when you think your parents are the most fucked-up people because they’re slightly flawed. These toxic thoughts create a storm inside of us. We’re so terrified that we’ll be just like them that we overblow their less-than-perfect characteristics into something worse than they are. But then we hit a certain age and, click, it’s as if a light switch flips. Suddenly, our parents don’t seem so bad. In my experience, it’s called acceptance. We’re not born with it, and it takes a while to cultivate. I think accepting our parents is a way of accepting ourselves.