If you are free...

 “I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.'”

Toni Morrison

(Quoted on Joy's mortar board.)

Sitting out here on the morning of my beautiful daughter's graduation, before the world wakes up and all the noise and ceremony begins, I've been thinking over the last 21 years, and really I just want to say thank you. Thank you to everyone who helped make today possible, everyone who loved and supported our little family over the years, everyone who taught us something, allowed us space to be, helped us grow and thrive.

And Joy, my favorite firstborn, what can I possibly say to you? You blow me away... Of course I'm excited that you earned your important pieces of paper and that you already have an awesome job to go to after this, but mostly I'm awed by the amazing human you have become--a woman of conviction and courage and deep deep compassion for others. I know the world will be a saner, kinder, freer (and vastly more colorful!) place because you are in it. Your dad would have been so very proud.

If I'm allowed to offer one piece of advice on this special day, it's simply this: always trust yourself, that inner voice of yours that's clear and straight and true. Listen to as much counsel from others as you want or feel you can stand, and then tune it all out and follow your own path. Because you already are, already have everything you need.