Kierkegaard wrote that life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. I have found that to be profoundly, viscerally true. In the moment of each rupture, being sent back downstairs, losing my husband Nick, leaving everything I knew, I could not see why. I was just trying to survive it. But looking back now, I can see the thread running through all of it. Every detour was the path. I just couldn't read the map while I was walking it.