Hands aren’t only for holding and grasping—they’re also for teaching us what it’s like to surrender, palms up, empty-handed. The nothing we find there is often the something we need.

It’s hard to let go of our many identities. Getting up and writing has been ‘who I am’ for forty years or so. The fear we all have is that when something leaves our lives, whether it’s a job, or a creative activity, or a person, we won’t know who we are without it. This is acutely present with caregivers: taking care of someone becomes our identity, and when that person is gone, the loss is compounded by losing the sense of self it gave us: what am I going to do now? How will I spend my days or nights? What will define me?