The Art of Human Connection

On March 23, 2026, I met up with some friends at Starbucks in my old neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. It was launch day for my book, The Luck We Carry , a memoir told in essays about my late husband Ken and our journey together through his cancer, and mine alone after he died. I wanted—needed—to put some goodness out into the world. Though the topic is heavy, I wrote with the idea that it could help someone navigating grief, learning from my lessons. This date was e

I found out on the morning of March 31, at the same time as 30,000 of my fellow Oracle colleagues. I’d gone to the gym in the morning. It was my last day of PTO. I’d taken the previous week off and the first two days of the next week off to work on the launch of my memoir, The Luck We Carry: Love, Loss, and the Stories that Shape Us . It’s a memoir I’d been working on generally for ten years, but more specifically, this version for the last two. It holds the stories of my lif

April 12, 2025, was a highly unusual day for me—one I've been thinking about all week as its anniversary approached. It was a day that held a mixture of dread, trepidation, and a longing for something I knew to be true, to not be. I woke up at 2:30 a.m. with Hudson snuggled beside me, and I loved the feeling of contentment and security so much that I hated to get out of bed. "So much has to happen before we can do this again," I said to him as I snuggled closer. It was the da