At some point, sadness will creep up your hands while you write and you won't know why. There are feelings writing can unearth long before the words to describe them. It's okay to stop. All blood pulses back to the heart. You don't need to open a vein to find your pulse.

Stories that elicit a big reaction provide us with a big opportunity to acknowledge our most challenging emotions and to wrestle with the assumptions, ideas, and beliefs that may no longer serve us. And that's the *whole* point of writing, of communicating, and of being human.