Last summer, my Mom gave me this copy of The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. She had probably mentioned this book at least a handful of times before, but I was finally open to reading it. I can be a little stubborn, especially about what I read. As I read and worked through the twelve weeks of material, I thought a lot about the legacy of sharing this book with my mom. Her life, creatively lived, along with her love of fine art, gave me the permission to love art too, to admire artists and writers, and to begin to pursue writing myself. If she hadn’t been so committed to creativity as a way of life and largely incapable of living any other way, I may never have begun writing in any earnest or my writing might have stayed locked away in my journals. Now after decades of filling page after page, I understand that inability to live any other way, and I’m finally learning to embrace it.