By Anne Heffron ~

Photo by Alice Hampson

Everything happens for a reason.

I believe this statement because I like my life better when I do. I have taught in prisons and I have a sense of what my life might be like if I lived in one, and I am pretty sure I would go Reservoir Dogs on the world if all the stuff I’ve dealt with in my life was random. I would be marking lines on a wall with the others who were hurt so much they felt they had no choice but to hurt back.

My friend Karen gave me Stephen Cope’s book The Great Work of Your Life, and it may be the single most influential book, aside from Little House in the Big Woods, I have ever read.