Places I Stopped on the Way Home: A Memoir of Chaos and Grace

by Meg Fee

I’ve come to learn that when you tell people you are leaving New York, they cock their head and get this very particular look on their face. Their response has almost nothing to do with you, and everything to do with them. New York: the great What if for so many—an idea, and not a city.

Make sure your identity isn’t based on something you might lose. You are not the size of your waist or your health or your job or someone else’s opinion of you. You are not the worst thing that has ever happened to you, and you are not the best, either.