When we tell our stories to others, we want them to sound effortless. We want to appear as if it all came easily to us — as if we simply picked the destination we wanted to reach or the goal we wanted to achieve, pursued it doggedly and unwaveringly, and eventually succeeded. But in real life it never happens like this. There are always false starts, detours, and course corrections, and more often than not the room we end up in is not the one we first envisioned. Maybe if we begin to tell our stories differently, if we start to talk about all the times our journey didn’t go as smoothly as expected, we can help others look past their preconceived notion that the road to the “perfect” room is without speed bumps and glitches.
— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 154-155