Last March, I wrote a two–part series about Cowlitz 2 Fire & Rescue Battalion Chief Mickel Zainfeld, a firefighter who died from suicide due to work-related PTSD.

As part of that series, I interviewed his widow, Kelly Zainfeld, whose strength and resolve to eradicate the conditions that led to her husband’s death moved me.

In my time at The Daily, the University of Washington’s student-run newspaper, I wrote nearly 100 articles. Most of those, especially early in my career, were for the opinion and arts sections of the paper, and were often zero-source articles on hot-button issues which I based on my own opinions and observations.

I was 20 or 21 when I wrote most of these pieces, old enough to have an opinion but frequently too young to understand what I was writing about. With hindsight, I now understand that I was, at times, parroting the opinions of others around me, responding to arguments I didn’t fully understand, or projecting the complex emotions of my youth where they didn’t belong.

Whenever a read a new article, poem, or book, I jot down excerpts and quotes that strike me into a huge, messy Google doc. These quotes inspire and give me strength, so here are a few select ones that I have found especially meaningful:

Continue reading “Quotes that inspire me” →