Handwriting Changing Quotes

Despite wanting me to end her life, after a short while, Mrs Sloan fought back with surprising strength for such a small woman. Being close to death changed people, I guess, like drinking alcohol or someone saying your handwriting is beautiful changes you.

Lily opened her hand and looked at her three willstones. Rowan had been right. She was changed forever. Lily sat up and saw a glass of water on the bedside table. A tiny card was propped up against it. It said, THIRSTY? in bold uppercase letters. Lily realized that she'd never seen Rowan's handwriting before. She stared at it, sipping her water, memorizing every swoop and curve. She swung her legs out of bed and noticed that she'd somehow struggled out of his robe while she slept. Rowan had left a stack of clothes on the floor next to her, with its own accompanying card that read NAKED? Lily laughed quietly to herself...

On Monday, however, when he returned to his house on the Street of Windows, he discovered a letter floating in a puddle inside the entrance, and on the wet envelope he recognized at once the imperious handwriting that so many changes in life had not changed, and he even thought he could detect the nocturnal perfume of withered gardenias, because after the initial shock, his heart told him everything: it was the letter he had been waiting for, without a moment’s respite, for over half a century.

I can’t make sense out of them. The handwriting is my father’s, but changed, more hasty or careless.

It is a map of our attitude toward life, a labyrinthine pathway to long-forgotten hiding places inside, a diagram of our subconscious mind.

By changing writing patterns we simultaneously reconfigure the neuropathways in the brain that record our self-image.

When he can't take anymore, Galen plucks his phone from his pocket and dials, then hangs up. When the call is returned, he says, "Hey, sweet lips." The females at the table hush each other to get a better listen. A few of them whip their heads toward Emma to see if she's on the other end of the conversation. Satisfied she's not, they lean closer. Rachel snorts. "If only you liked sweets." "I can't wait to see you tonight. Wear that pink shirt I like." Rachel laughs. "Sounds like you're in what we humans like to call a pickle. My poor, drop-dead-gorgeous sweet pea. Emma still not talking to you, leaving you alone with all those hormonal girls?" "Eight-thirty? That's so far away. Can't I meet you sooner?" One of the females actually gets up and takes her tray and her attitude to another table. Galen tries not to get too excited. "Do you need to be checked out of school, son? Are you feeling ill?" Galen tosses a glance at Emma, who's picking a pepperoni off her pizza and eyeing it as if it were dolphin dung. "I can't skip school to meet you again, boo. But I'll be thinking about you. No one but you." A few more females get up and stalk their trays to the trash. The cheerleader in front of him rolls her eyes and starts a conversation with the chubby brunette beside her-the same chubby brunette she pushed into a locker to get to him two hours ago. "Be still my heart," Rachel drawls. "But seriously, I can't read your signals. I don't know what you're asking me to do." "Right now, nothing. But I might change my mind about skipping. I really miss you." Rachel clears her throat. "All right, sweet pea. You just let your mama know, and she'll come get her wittle boy from school, okay?" Galen hangs up. Why is Emma laughing again? Mark can't be that funny. The girl beside him clues him in: "Mark Baker. All the girls love him. But not as much as they love you. Except maybe Emma, I guess." "Speaking of all these girls, how did they get my phone number?" She giggles. "It's written on the wall in the girls' bathroom. One hundred hall." She holds her cell phone up to his face. An image of his number scrawled onto a stall door lights up the screen. In Emma's handwriting.

His handwriting…” I choked out the words. It was on the walls, all around me—and now that I was looking for it, I recognized something I should have noticed the moment the writing had changed from a childish scrawl.

At the bottom of the box were two big fairy-tale collections our father had sent us sometime after our parents divorced in 1963. I was four and my sister was five. We never saw him again. One book was a beautifully illustrated collection of Russian fairy tales inscribed, "To Rachel, from Daddy." The other, a book of Japanese fables, was inscribed to me. It had been years since I had opened them. I stared at the handwriting. Something seemed a bit off. Then it dawned on me - both inscriptions bore my own adolescent scrawl. I had always remembered the books and our father's dedications as proof of his love for us. Yet, how malleable our memories are, even if our brains are intact. Neuroscientists now suggest that while the core meaning of a long-term memory remains, the memory transforms each time we attempt to retrieve it. In fact, anatomical changes occur in the brain every single time we remember. As Proust said, "The only paradise is paradise lost.

Are you saying people aren’t interested in the truth?” “Listen, what’s true to a lot of people is that they need the money for the rent by the end of the week. Look at Mr. Ron and his friends. What’s the truth mean to them? They live under a bridge!” She held up a piece of lined paper, crammed edge to edge with the careful looped handwriting of someone for whom holding a pen was not a familiar activity. “This is a report of the annual meeting of the Ankh-Morpork Caged Birds Society,” she said. “They’re just ordinary people who breed canaries and things as a hobby. Their chairman lives next door to me, which is why he gave me this. This stuff is important to him! My goodness, but it’s dull. It’s all about Best of Breed and some changes in the rules about parrots which they argued about for two hours. But the people who were arguing were people who mostly spend their day mincing meat or sawing wood and basically leading little lives that are controlled by other people, do you see? They’ve got no say in who runs the city but they can damn well see to it that cockatoos aren’t lumped in with parrots. It’s not their fault. It’s just how things are. Why are you sitting there with your mouth open like that?

Dear Fisher, I guess this is it, huh? After almost fourteen years together, starting a life of our own on this island, five tours of duty and countless letters I’ve written you through it all, I finally go out to the mailbox and see something I’ve always dreamed of: an envelope with your handwriting on it. For one moment, I actually thought you’d changed your mind. That all the awful things you said to me were just your way of coping after everything you’d been through. I was still here, Fisher. I was still here, holding my breath, waiting for you to come back even though you told me you never would. You always said you’d find your way back to me. Out of all the lies you’ve told me, this one hurts the most. Enclosed you will find the signed divorce papers, as requested. I hope you find what you’re looking for. I’m sorry it wasn’t me. Lucy

Now!” exclaimed Lupin. “I am going to take a rest, feed myself up, and gradually become myself again. It’s all very well to be Baudru or another, to change your personality as you would your boots, and to select your appearance, your voice, your expression, your handwriting. But there comes a time when you cease to know yourself amid all these changes, and that is very sad. I feel at present as the man must have felt who lost his shadow. I am going to look for myself… and to find myself

Why, I never!” Waving a letter covered with spidery handwriting, she said, “What a surprise! After all these years, Hannah wants to pay me a visit. She’d love to see the house she grew up in.” At the sound of Hannah’s name, my heart beat faster. Speechless with happiness, I listened to my aunt chatter excitedly. “She says John died last winter and she’s staying in Riverview to straighten out his estate.” Aunt Blythe paused to scrutinize the letter. “Listen to this, Drew: ‘You’ll find me a bit long in the tooth, Blythe, but, never fear, I still have my wits about me. You might warn Edward I’m not a jot sweeter than I was the last time we met!” Aunt Blythe laughed. “In other words, Hannah hasn’t changed a bit!

In a dream I sometimes have, I am frantically trying to save as much as I can from my childhood home before I am forced to leave forever because of some disaster. In this dream, from which I awake with my jaw clenched like a fist, I grab whatever I can reach, take whatever I can carry. Always my childhood books and our family photo albums, but sometimes also the silver candlesticks, the things on my father's desk, the paintings on the walls. Maybe it comes from the speed with which my family changed shape one day, maybe it comes from moving, maybe it comes from my grandmother's hinted horror of losing everything in the Holocaust, but I cannot part with a dented pot that I remember my mother putting on the stove each week. Or the sofa my father bought with his first pay cheque, which was never comfortable when I was growing up and is not comfortable now. I cannot part with the lipstick I found softly rolling in an empty drawer months after my mother left. Or a shopping list on an envelope in her handwriting. In a world that changes so quickly, and where everyone eventually leaves, our stuff is the one thing we can trust. It testifies, through the mute medium of Things, that we were part of something greater than ourselves.

He stared at her in insolent silence, unable to believe the alluring, impulsive girl he remembered had become this coolly aloof, self-possessed young woman. Even with her dusty clothes and the smear of dirt on her cheek, Elizabeth Cameron was strikingly beautiful, but she’d changed so much that-except for the eyes-he scarcely recognized her. One thing hadn’t changed: She was still a schemer and a liar. Straightening abruptly from his stance in the doorway, Ian walked forward. “I’ve had enough of this charade, Miss Cameron. No one invited you here, and you damn well know it.” Blinded with wrath and humiliation, Elizabeth groped in her reticule and snatched out the handwritten letter her uncle had received inviting Elizabeth to join Ian there. Marching up to him, she slapped the invitation against his chest. Instinctively he caught it but didn’t open it. “Explain that,” she commanded, backing away and then waiting. “Another note, I’ll wager,” he drawled sarcastically, thinking of the night he’d gone to the greenhouse to meet her and recalling what a fool he’d been about her. Elizabeth stood beside the table, determined to have the satisfaction of hearing his explanation before she left-not that anything he said could make her stay. When he showed no sign of opening it, she turned furiously to Jake, who was sorely disappointed that Ian was deliberately chasing off two females who could surely be persuaded to do the cooking if they stayed. “Make him read it aloud!” she ordered the startled Jake. “Now, Ian,” Jake said, thinking of his empty stomach and the bleak future that lay ahead for it if the ladies went away, “why don’t you jes’ read that there little note, like the lady asked?” When Ian Thornton ignored the older man’s suggestion, Elizabeth lost control of her temper. Without thinking what she was actually doing, she reached out and snatched the pistol off the table, primed it, cocked it, and leveled it at Ian Thornton’s broad chest. “Read that note!” Jake, whose concern was still on his stomach, held up his hands as if the gun were pointed at him. “Ian, it could be a misunderstanding, you know, and it’s not nice to be rude to these ladies. Why don’t you read it, and then we’ll all sit down and have a nice”-he inclined his head meaningfully to the sack of provisions on the table-“supper.” “I don’t need to read it,” Ian snapped. “The last time I read a note from Lady Cameron I met her in a greenhouse and got shot in the arm for my trouble.” “Are you implying I invited you into that greenhouse?” Elizabeth scoffed furiously. With an impatient sigh Ian said, “Since you’re obviously determined to enact a Cheltenham tragedy, let’s get it over with before you’re on your way.” “Do you deny you sent me a note?” she snapped. “Of course I deny it!” “Then what were you doing in the greenhouse?” she shot back at him. “I came in response to that nearly illegible note you sent me,” he said in a bored, insulting drawl. “May I suggest that in future you devote less of your time to theatrics and some of it to improving your handwriting?” His gaze shifted to the pistol. “Put the gun down before you hurt yourself.

This is how you lose her. You lose her when you forget to remember the little things that mean the world to her: the sincerity in a stranger’s voice during a trip to the grocery store, the delight of finding something lost or forgotten like a sticker from when she was five, the selflessness of a child giving a part of his meal to another, the scent of new books in the store, the surprise short but honest notes she tucks in her journal and others you could only see if you look closely. You must remember when she forgets. You lose her when you don’t notice that she notices everything about you: your use of the proper punctuation that tells her continuation rather than finality, your silence when you’re about to ask a question but you think anything you’re about to say to her would be silly, your mindless humming when it is too quiet, your handwriting when you sign your name on blank sheets of paper, your muted laughter when you are trying to be polite, and more and more of what you are, which you don’t even know about yourself, because she pays attention. She remembers when you forget. You lose her for every second you make her feel less and less of the beauty that she is. When you make her feel that she is replaceable. She wants to feel cherished. When you make her feel that you are fleeting. She wants you to stay. When you make her feel inadequate. She wants to know that she is enough and she does not need to change for you, nor for anyone else because she is she and she is beautiful, kind and good. You must learn her. You must know the reason why she is silent. You must trace her weakest spots. You must write to her. You must remind her that you are there. You must know how long it takes for her to give up. You must be there to hold her when she is about to. You must love her because many have tried and failed. And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept. And, this is how you keep her.

Here are some other tips to keep in mind as you implement your decision journal. Get beyond the obvious. Often your first thoughts aren’t your own, but are the thinking of someone else. So try to get beyond the brief and obvious insights. Handwrite in your journal. Technology is great, but writing things down in your own handwriting will keep you honest and help prevent hindsight bias. It’s easy to look at a document on your computer screen and say, “I didn’t see it that way.” It’s a lot harder to look at your own handwriting and say the same thing. Be specific and concrete. Avoid vague language. If you’re stuck in the fog of abstractions, you’re not ready to make a decision, and it will be easy to change definitions to fit any new information. Write down the probabilities as you see them. Review your journal often. I review mine quarterly. This is an important part of the process. It helps you to realize where you made mistakes, how you made them, what types of decisions you’re bad at, etc. If you share your journal with a coach, they can review it and help you identify areas for improvement. Remember it’s not just about outcomes. Maybe you made the right decision (which, in our sense, means used a good process) and still had a bad outcome. That’s called a bad break. On the other hand, maybe you discovered that you had a good outcome for the wrong reasons (i.e., despite a bad process), and a decision journal will stop you from being overly confident in using that process in the future.

People predict by making up stories People predict very little and explain everything People live under uncertainty whether they like it or not People believe they can tell the future if they work hard enough People accept any explanation as long as it fits the facts The handwriting was on the wall, it was just the ink that was invisible People often work hard to obtain information they already have And avoid new knowledge Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic Universe In this match, surprises are expected Everything that has already happened must have been inevitable

People predict by making up stories People predict very little and explain everything People live under uncertainty whether they like it or not People believe they can tell the future if they work hard enough People accept any explanation as long as it fits the facts The handwriting was on the wall, it was just the ink that was invisible People often work hard to obtain information they already have And avoid new knowledge Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic Universe In this match, surprises are expected Everything that has already happened must have been inevitable At first glance it resembles a poem.

I don’t know how many years had passed that I hadn’t thought about her. It was a few months after the death of my mother that her name came to me again. I was cleaning out her closet and dresser to donate some of her clothes to the Church. They always had clothes drives to give to some of the poorer people in the area. Better for someone else to have them than just hanging in a closet or in a drawer. At the bottom of one of her drawers, my eyes saw an envelope with my name on. Immediately, I recognized the handwriting on the envelope and for the first time in a long time, I could feel the tears flowing out of my eyes. This wasn’t no single tear drop cry. This was the big, fat, messy tears that come from memories flashing through your mind. Tiffany did write something to me and it was kept from me. I almost unintentionally crumpled the letter in my hand as the combination of hurt and rage took over me for a few moments. I went back to my bedroom and sat down on the edge of my bed. The letter had her North Carolina address on it. That letter would have been a way for us to stay in touch. For almost eight years, I had believed that she didn’t want to stay in contact with me. In that moment, I realized that the hurt I felt for being disregarded was unfounded and she was the one who had the right to feel forgotten. She must have believed that she meant little to me, like I thought she did of me. It’s weird how quickly your perspective can change when given new information. I held that letter in my shaking hands for a few minutes. I didn’t know what to do. Opening it seemed pointless to me. All it would do was rekindle feelings that I once had and couldn’t do anything about. After all those years, I couldn’t try and reconnect to her life. We both moved past each other and it wouldn’t be fair to her to come back. It wouldn’t make her feel good about herself to know that my parents hid that letter from me, like she was some horrible person that I needed to avoid. She may not even live at that address anymore. She undoubtedly moved away for college. I wasn’t in love with her anymore and I don’t know if she ever loved me, but if she did, I’m sure she didn’t anymore. I did the only thing that I felt was right. I went outside and lit a cigarette in the backyard. I took a deep inhale from my Camel full flavored filtered cigarette. I hadn’t converted to menthols, yet. I re-lit my lighter and put a corner of the letter into the flame until I was certain that it had caught fire. I held it in my hand watching the white of the envelope turn black under the blue and yellow flame. Once the envelope was about three quarters burned, I let it fall out of my hand and watched it float for a few moments before it hit the bottom concrete step where it continued to burn. It had all turned black and the carbonized paper started to break away from each other as I stamped out the embers with my sneaker. The wind carried away the pieces of carbon and the memory of her floated away from me. Watching those small burned pieces of paper scatter across my backyard made me realize that my childhood was over. I had nothing to show for it. All I had was myself. I didn’t even know why I was still living in my parent’s house after my mother died. There was nothing there for me. Life would only begin for me once I found something that mattered to me. Unfortunately for me, the only thing that mattered to me was words.

She also hesitated to sign anything, even credit card slips, because she'd never liked her signature. She'd tried changing it over the years, but it was like trying to change her voice. On the other hand, Hudson was overflowing with people who'd successfully reinvented themselves. I was a corporate lawyer in the city for years, and then I moved to Hudson and became a flower farmer/ doll maker/antiques dealer/chef/arborist/alcoholic, and I never looked back. "I moved to Hudson to reinvent my handwriting," she imagined telling someone over drinks. "It's been an incredible journey.

Sometimes, she thinks he’s right to worry. Because adventure, it turns out, is a dangerously seductive word. It reaches underneath Violet’s ribcage and pulls, like a cosmic string attuned to a compass point elsewhere. She spends hours cloistered in the library, poring over a map in its appropriately sized atlas folio splendour, until her vision bleeds faint blue latitude and longitude lines. She collects city names like other people collect spare change, letting words linger in unfamiliar satisfaction. She imagines, too, what it would be like to be that person heaving the bag over her shoulders, her diary stuffed with tales of the delights and dangers on the road. The stories she would bring back, wonder itself captured in her scrawled handwriting. A dozen languages on her lips, a hundred histories at her fingertips, every sight unforgettable. See? Seduction. Ambrose tells her it’ll fade as she gets older. But that peculiar time when magic fades and cynicism sets in never happens, so there’s always a part of her waiting for something.

People predict by making up stories People predict very little and explain everything People live under uncertainty whether they like it or not People believe they can tell the future if they work hard enough People accept any explanation as long as it fits the facts The handwriting was on the wall, it was just the ink that was invisible People often work hard to obtain information they already have And avoid new knowledge Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic Universe

I bite my lip as I begin reading: She needs some sun! Her eyes are hard to see—they’re too dark; her nose is thin; no cheek bones!; I think her lips are uneven; her chin is really square, and my favorite: is that a mole or a zit? Awesome. Twenty pages of these cryptic remarks sure do make a girl feel good about herself. The last page changes my sour mood completely. On it there is a sketch of my face—no, sketch is the wrong word. It’s too common a word. This is more than a sketch. This is a portrait of my face. The image of the girl staring back at me is so stunning, that I actually gasp. The handwriting on the bottom of the page, which is small and elegant, holds only two words: You’re perfect.

Veins raised themselves along the backs of my hands that summer. My handwriting changed several times. I began reading Time magazine. Soon after that it was time to go.

The artwork of children always broke Grace's heart. The pieces were like snapshots, a moment that is forever gone, a life-post, never to be repeated. Their artistic abilities will mature and change. The innocence will be gone, captured only in fingerpaint or coloring out of the lines, in uneven handwriting.

STEPS TO A POWER NOTE:     1.  USE UNBRANDED CARDS WITH A SYMBOL OR MONOGRAM THAT REPRESENTS YOU. IT’S A PERSONAL NOTE.     2.  USE BLUE INK. IT LOOKS ORIGINAL AND POSITIVE.     3.  WORDS - USE YOU, BUT AVOID I, ME, MY.     4.  BE SPECIFIC IN YOUR PRAISE. IDENTIFY AND ACKNOWLEDGE A CHARACTERISTIC, A TALENT, A UNIQUE QUALITY.     5.  LEVERAGE THE POWER OF POSITIVE PROJECTION. IDENTIFY A PERSONAL CHARACTERISTIC YOU WANT TO IMPROVE AND EXPRESS RESPECT FOR OTHERS WHO POSSESS THAT QUALITY (HAPPINESS, WEALTH, BALANCE, ETC.)     6.  WRITE RIGHTLY - SLOPE TEXT SLIGHTLY UPWARD FROM LEFT TO RIGHT. READ YOUR HANDWRITING CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE BY VIMALA RODGERS.7     7.  THE POWER OF THE P.S. USE A P.S. AS A CALL-TO-ACTION: ASK THE RECIPIENT TO TAKE ACTION SUCH AS E-MAILING OR CALLING. “Whom do I write these POWER Notes to?” Rick asked. “Everybody you know,” Coach answered. “Pick up a business card, look in your e-mail, look in your database—find a person,

Wanting to change your handwriting may be an indication that you are ready, or wanting, to change a whole lot of other things in your life as well. You alone can decide what you wish to change and why.

My distaste for computers has an almost-political fervor: they’re changing our society, I say, and for the worse. Let’s act human. Converse. Use our handwriting. I

Whatever his reasons, Gorbachev had the intelligence to admit Communism was not working, the courage to battle for change, and, ultimately, the wisdom to introduce the beginnings of democracy, individual freedom, and free enterprise. As I said at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, the Soviet Union faced a choice: Either it made fundamental changes or it became obsolete. Gorbachev saw the handwriting on the Wall and opted for change.

February 3 MORNING “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors.” — Romans 8:12 AS God’s creatures, we are all debtors to Him: to obey Him with all our body, and soul, and strength. Having broken His commandments, as we all have, we are debtors to His justice, and we owe to Him a vast amount which we are not able to pay. But of the Christian it can be said that he does not owe God’s justice anything, for Christ has paid the debt His people owed; for this reason the believer owes the more to love. I am a debtor to God’s grace and forgiving mercy; but I am no debtor to His justice, for He will never accuse me of a debt already paid. Christ said, “It is finished!” and by that He meant, that whatever His people owed was wiped away for ever from the book of remembrance. Christ, to the uttermost, has satisfied divine justice; the account is settled; the handwriting is nailed to the cross; the receipt is given, and we are debtors to God’s justice no longer. But then, because we are not debtors to our Lord in that sense, we become ten times more debtors to God than we should have been otherwise. Christian, pause and ponder for a moment. What a debtor thou art to divine sovereignty! How much thou owest to His disinterested love, for He gave His own Son that He might die for thee. Consider how much you owe to His forgiving grace, that after ten thousand affronts He loves you as infinitely as ever. Consider what you owe to His power; how He has raised you from your death in sin; how He has preserved your spiritual life; how He has kept you from falling; and how, though a thousand enemies have beset your path, you have been able to hold on your way. Consider what you owe to His immutability. Though you have changed a thousand times, He has not changed once. Thou art as deep in debt as thou canst be to every attribute of God. To God thou owest thyself, and all thou hast — yield thyself as a living sacrifice, it is but thy reasonable service.

After a couple of hours she breathlessly put aside her palette knife and asked, ‘Did you ever experiment with your handwriting?’ I thought about this as Jacinta poured herself a glass of milk from a carton. ‘I suppose so. Once I wasn’t being forced to use joined up writing with a fountain pen any more. Why?’ ‘You sent me a few of my old exercise books from school after you cleared out Mum’s place a few years ago. Do you remember?’ I told her I didn’t. Maybe David had posted them to her. ‘When I was at primary school I wrote using the whole wide line. The capitals touched the top and everything was balloony, you know, round and chipper. But my handwriting in the later exercise books, I think I must have been fourteen or so, was completely truncated like inky footprints made by ants. I could hardly make out what I’d written. I don’t know how the teachers deciphered it. I still don’t quite know what comes naturally when I write. I don’t have a style. It changes. Sometimes it’s all swallowed up and at other times I write using tall, spindly letters. Maybe it’s the pen and paper I’m using. That makes a difference.’ ‘Yeah, it does,’ I agreed. ‘I hate thin-ruled paper.’ She took a gulp from her milk. The light was behind her. I couldn’t see her features. Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail like the one she wore to school for years. I hated Mum. I hated Pete. I hated Gavin. I hated myself. Jacinta said, ‘When I paint I have a signature. It’s my own and I don’t have to be afraid.’ ‘I’m sorry, Jacinta. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do.’ ‘I don’t blame you. But I thought you’d forgotten. Or forgiven. Or a bit of both.’ ‘A bit of both,’ I admitted. She was quiet, began to clean up. I didn’t help. I just watched. And eventually she turned back to me and said, ‘How’s Zoey?

Such changes are called "switching" in clinical practice, and we see them often in individuals with trauma histories. Patients activate distinctly different emotional and physiological states as they move from one topic to another. Switching manifests not only as remarkably different vocal patterns but also in different facial expressions and body movements. Some patients even appear to change their personal identity, from timid to forceful and aggressive or from anxiously compliant to starkly seductive. When they write about their deepest fears, their handwriting often becomes more childlike and primitive

Upon examination it was clear that all two hundred names were in the same handwriting. They were also in alphabetical order.

With persons of intent, purpose and commitment, miracles are a natural result of daily practice.

When Sarah prayed for people, she wrote their name down and what she asked God to give them.” He handed a journal to me, and I opened it to see the bubbles of her handwriting. Again and again, leafing through it, I saw my name. “Sarah prayed for you every day,” he said. “Every single day, she put your name down.” Even now, I burst into tears. I had grown up so lonely. Not always alone, but always lonely. And that whole time, Sarah had thought of me with love every day, possibly at the very moments when I felt the most lost. That realization—that I was never truly alone all that time—changed how I thought about heaven, it wasn’t some place in the sky. It was with Sarah, and Sarah was with me. What had seemed like blind faith when we lost Sarah, the naive thought that we were protected, was real. I was never alone, and everything was going to be okay. I stayed up late to read through the journals, seeing for myself how Sarah was always thinking of ways to help people and be of service. As I read, I began to feel an overwhelming sense of purpose, and I realized that I had inherited Sarah’s. I would keep her work alive through my life. Those are pretty big shoes to fill, I remember thinking. Just as quickly, I pushed away my fears: Well, they’re the only ones you’ve got.

Maybe Sloan would agree to a deal. I’d talk to someone about some of my issues if she would agree to go to grief counseling. It wasn’t me giving in to Josh like she wanted, but Sloan knew how much I hated therapists, and she’d always wanted me to see someone. I was debating how to pitch this to her when I glanced into the living room and saw it—a single purple carnation on my coffee table. I looked around the kitchen like I might suddenly find someone in my house. But Stuntman was calm, plopped under my chair. I went in to investigate and saw that the flower sat on top of a binder with the words “just say okay” written on the outside in Josh’s writing. He’d been here? My heart began to pound. I looked again around the living room like I might see him, but it was just the binder. I sat on the sofa, my hands on my knees, staring at the binder for what felt like ages before I drew the courage to pull the book into my lap. I tucked my hair behind my ear and licked my lips, took a breath, and opened it up. The front page read “SoCal Fertility Specialists.” My breath stilled in my lungs. What? He’d had a consultation with Dr. Mason Montgomery from SoCal Fertility. A certified subspecialist in reproductive endocrinology and infertility with the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He’d talked to them about in vitro and surrogacy, and he’d had fertility testing done. I put a shaky hand to my mouth, and tears began to blur my eyes. I pored over his test results. Josh was a breeding machine. Strong swimmers and an impressive sperm count. He’d circled this and put a winking smiley face next to it and I snorted. He’d outlined the clinic’s high success rates—higher than the national average—and he had gotten signed personal testimonials from previous patients, women like me who used a surrogate. Letter after letter of encouragement, addressed to me. The next page was a complete breakdown on the cost of in vitro and information on Josh’s health insurance and what it covered. His insurance was good. It covered the first round of IVF at 100 percent. He even had a small business plan. He proposed selling doghouses that he would build. The extra income would raise enough money for the second round of in vitro in about three months. The next section was filled with printouts from the Department of International Adoptions. Notes scrawled in Josh’s handwriting said Brazil just opened up. He broke down the process, timeline, and costs right down to travel expenses and court fees. I flipped past a sleeve full of brochures to a page on getting licensed for foster care. He’d already gone through the background check, and he enclosed a form for me, along with a series of available dates for foster care orientation classes and in-home inspections. Was this what he’d been doing? This must have taken him weeks. My chin quivered. Somehow, seeing it all down on paper, knowing we’d be in it together, it didn’t feel so hopeless. It felt like something that we could do. Something that might actually work. Something possible. The last page had an envelope taped to it. I pried it open with trembling hands, my throat getting tight. I know what the journey will look like, Kristen. I’m ready to take this on. I love you and I can’t wait to tell you the best part…Just say okay. I dropped the letter and put my face into my hands and sobbed like I’d never sobbed in my life. He’d done all this for me. Josh looked infertility dead in the eye, and his choice was still me. He never gave up. All this time, no matter how hard I rejected him or how difficult I made it, he never walked away from me. He just changed strategies. And I knew if this one didn’t work he’d try another. And another. And another. He’d never stop trying until I gave in. And Sloan—she knew. She knew this was here, waiting for me. That’s why she’d made me leave. They’d conspired to do this.

Career inflection points are commonplace. A story comes to mind. It so happens that it was related to me by a business journalist who had interviewed me when this book was first published. This man used to be a banker. He was happily and productively employed until one day he went to work and learned that his employer had been acquired by another, larger bank. In short order he was out of a job. He decided to change careers and become a stockbroker. He knew that he would have to pay his dues. While he was comfortable with financial matters, he knew that a banker’s skills are not the same as those required of a stockbroker. So he went to stockbroker school and eventually started working as a full-fledged broker. For a while, things went well and the future looked promising. However, a short time before we met, on-line brokerage firms started to appear. Several of this man’s clients left him, preferring to do their business with low-cost on-line firms. The handwriting was on the wall. This time, our man decided to make his move early. He had always had an interest in, and aptitude for, writing. Building on the financial knowledge that he had first acquired as a banker, and that was reinforced

In the years 1889 and 1890, at the Ratsschul Library in Zwickau, about seventy-five miles east of Erfurt, someone came upon what turned out to be early fifteenth-century volumes that Luther had held and studied as a young monk. It was a spectacular find. Several of these books were works by Augustine. The marginal notes and other writing were confirmed as Luther’s own handwriting, so suddenly historians could know what he had underlined as he was reading.

she could sell in the café provisions she baked in her own time with a shelf life longer than pastries. When she thought of it there had been a rush of certainty she could do it, and a prickling of pride in having conceived a way to make money on her own. It would double at least what she was making now. Without Nicholas it might never had occurred to her. The other day he had stuck a label, which he had found in the junk drawer, on a plastic-wrapped loaf of banana bread. He wrote on the label with a marker, "From the Summer Kitchen Bakery." She had found the gesture adorable at the time and hugged him, but something about it had evidently started percolating in the recesses of her mind, and now she was lapping at the brew like someone tasting it for the first time and wondering how she had never before tasted such ambition. She was thinking of cellophane-packaged chocolate brownies and caramel blondies and orange-and-almond biscotti and pear and oat slices and butter shortbread and Belgian chocolate truffles, marmalades, chutney, relishes, and jellies beautified in jars with black-and-white gingham hats and black-and-white ribbon tied above skirted brims. She could even sell a muesli mix she had developed, full of organic cranberries and nuts and the zest of unwaxed lemons. And she wouldn't change Nicholas's label at all. A child's handwriting impressed that the goods were homemade. She would have his design printed professionally, in black and white, too, old world, like the summer kitchen itself.

I don't understand," she said. "I have no clue what you were trying to say this morning." "Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm not firing on all eight cylinders right now." He self-consciously attempted to rub away the purpling sags beneath his eyes. After the white spots dissipated she had impossibly grown even more beautiful. She was magical like that; even if he only looked away for a moment, when he returned his gaze upon her, those cheeks, those eyes, those lips were somehow even more enticing. Somehow even more irresistible. Jesus, could she make him thump. "I didn't really sleep last night. After reading your comments and seeing your handwriting again after such a long time...my head shot into a kind of hyperdrive." "What do you mean?" Her eyes fluttered as she looked up at him. Not flirtatiously, but with inquisitiveness. Oh, the way she fluttered those lids. His chest expanded; he was beyond enamored of her intellect and the way she always needed to get the clearest picture possible. "I just couldn't stop thinking how great everything was between us, and how fantastic everything is going to be once we work out the personal shit we're both dealing with," he said. "I had goosebumps trilling up my arms and the back of my neck because I have already done three or four rewrites, and like eighty percent of the changes I made mirrored your suggestions." He took a deep breath. He would inhale her entirety if he could, make her a permanent part of himself- absorb her being. "It was kind of eerie." He placed a clumsy hand on her cheek and caressed her eyebrow with his thumb, wishing to god it were his bottom lip. "And so not surprising.

Each time we press the pen to the paper to create a letter formation, connect letters, or shape a margin, we are declaring, “This is who I am.

In simple terms, our writing patterns are clear indicators of how we feel about ourselves. They are a measure of our self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-reliance; they indicate our fears as well as our unique abilities.

The irony of this new discovery is that for hundreds of years educators did seem to sense that children’s brains had to be built up through exercises of increasing difficulty that strengthened brain functions. Up through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a classical education often included rote memorization of long poems in foreign languages, which strengthened the auditory memory (hence thinking in language) and an almost fanatical attention to handwriting, which probably helped strengthen motor capacities and thus not only helped handwriting but added speed and fluency to reading and speaking. Often a great deal of attention was paid to exact elocution and to perfecting the pronunciation of words. Then in the 1960s educators dropped such traditional exercises from the curriculum, because they were too rigid, boring, and “not relevant.” But the loss of these drills has been costly; they may have been the only opportunity that many students had to systematically exercise the brain function that gives us fluency and grace with symbols.