Elena read it twice.
Then she replied.
“I don’t think we have to choose between gratitude and honesty. You can be proud of the love you’ve given and still acknowledge that some days are hard. I hope you get opportunities to build something for yourself, too.”
She continued reading.
A young father described working overseas and missing his son’s first steps.
A woman who had recently divorced wrote that she was learning to live alone without believing that being alone meant she had failed.
Another reader said she had spent years thinking that success required her to become so strong that she never needed anyone.
Elena sat back in her chair.
She had thought she was sharing a personal confession.
Instead, she had opened a door through which strangers were walking, one by one, carrying the parts of themselves they usually kept hidden.
She began to understand something she had never learned in flight school.
