I'm excited by this new, surprising direction, which feels like a sort of coming out – both within myself and out in the world. Suddenly, in addition to all the other kinds of writer I am, I'm something else...something I never expected to call myself!

It took all the courage I could muster at age 20 to call Gay Montreal and stammer 'I-I think I'm gay' into the phone and then take the bus downtown and purposefully talk about it, face-to-face, with a gay man.

That was my first coming out; there would be four more: at 39 when I reluctantly dropped the 'gay' label, at 43 when I married a woman and came out as no-longer-gay to my gay friends, at 50 when I lost the 'married' label, and at 54 when I came out all over again as a gay man.

But the first 'coming out' is always the toughest.

When I “landed” in Sedona a year ago today, after one of the most financially and emotionally challenging periods in my life, I couldn’t know that I was about to make this place my home. For the third time

In the Jewish tradition, the number 18 carries special spiritual significance. That's because its letters spell out chai (pronounced "khai"), the Hebrew word for "life." The Chinese also view 18 as propitious, associating it with prosperity and success. In numerology, 18 is equally positive; 1 represents new beginnings, 8 is also a number of success and 9 (1+8) is the number of completion. As well, eighteen is the age when we leave childhood behind and move into adulthood. Here’s why all this is relevan…

Stories are expressions of our humanity, of our universality. In our stories we discover not what separates us but what unites us. We discover not our differences but our similarities. Read others' stories, but do more than that. Tell your stories, whatever form they take. Share your fears and joys, your failures and triumphs. Share your humanity. Let us see you...and let us see ourselves in you. That's how we heal ourselves. That's how we heal the world.

My time in Sedona has also been a time of miracles. Because I kept listening and trusting – even as the voices around me "kept shouting their bad advice," as poet Mary Oliver put it in "The Journey" – I have managed to keep moving forward, even in the midst of the uncertainty and senselessness of these times. How? By listening and trusting. By continuing not only to write and teach but to do my imperfect human best to live what I write and teach.

in every moment, the higher wisdom we all carry within is calling on us to do and be the impossible, even though it makes no conventional sense, even though we don't know where to begin or who we'll be when we're done. All we can do is  listen, get past our resistance and surrender.

It doesn't matter whether you call yourself a writer. What matters is that you find an outlet to express what you're feeling in these unprecedented times are affecting you. What matters is that you open your heart to the inner wisdom that will help guide you through and past the fear, that will help you avoid the apocalyptic panic that is so prevalent right now.

The most powerful path through any crisis is through our stories. Now is the time to free yours! Read on for a ton of writers’ resources, including some that won’t cost you a dime!

When did the call first come? When did you know, as clearly as you know your face, that you had to write? When did you know that an imperative deeper than any you have known was crying out for you to express it in words? When did you know?

Close your eyes and remember. Remember the stories you invented... Remember wonder and imagination... Remember make-believe... You can write.

“Sedona is my heart home,” she said to me wistfully, and in that moment I realized that it is mine, too. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I get to stay. It does mean that I will relish every moment I have here and will continue to be grateful for all the miracles that this magical place is blessing me with!