The stories of our lives, a knotted buddle, a spider web. Experiences so different then others and yet also so similar. Stories that in their reading bring us great understanding and insight to our own lives. Listening Is an Act of Love, a book created out of the storycorps project is an amazing collection of stories of our lives, fragments and colorful like a stained glass window. Strangest, just names in a book, and yet sometimes you feel so close that your could just reach out, hug them. One day I hope to write, and that in the stories I share someone feels that closeness, finds a piece of themselves, finds inspiration, or finds understanding. Before this year I never read much, but when I slipped into depression in the late spring and summer I wanted so much to escape my own pain that I picked up a book and lost myself in another’s world, another’s joy, another’s pain, while now the depression has lessoned its grip the interest in reading that I hadn’t had before did not leave me. The people in the books I have read have become friends, therapists, teachers and I wouldn’t leave them behind for anything. When first I opened a book to escape, I know am opening them to expand.