I'll never forget coming home after covering Sandy Hook. Seeing the faces of family members. The firefighters who could never unsee the unthinkable. Those tiny caskets. I came home, sat in my dark apartment because I didn't even bother to turn the lights on, and wept.
How it happened that Mastro Cherry, carpenter, found a piece of wood that wept and laughed like a child.
I've wept for Haiti a thousand times over the years since my first trip during the Duvalier reign.
When you're first pregnant, you don't want to talk about the idea that a miscarriage or premature birth is possible. The difficulties of things like that kind of get swept under the rug, and when they happen to us we are blindsided and think we are the only people going through it.
He had a way with him. Before you had a chance to say no, he was there and done. That only happened to me once before, with a duke, who literally swept me off my feet, and before I knew what was happening, we'd done it. Another terrible mistake.
It's easy to get swept up in the trappings of that sort of lifestyle, but I've been doing it for long enough that I know how easy it is to fall victim to that sort of arrogance and cockiness that celebrity culture can bring about, in young men especially.
Through the potent example of his own life, President Obama enabled us to believe the best about America, and, therefore, about ourselves. That uplifting narrative - essentially equating the promise of America with his extraordinary life story - swept candidate Obama into the presidency.
I do feel blessed to have small ears - I've never felt self-conscious when my hair is swept back. My feet are a different story - I grew up being painfully aware of them because they are so long.
And later, if I ever felt that I was getting swept away by the craziness of being in a band, well, I'd go back to Virginia.
I watched the night unfold from beginning to end on my own here in my flat in Budapest where I've been working for the last six months, and when it was announced that Barack Obama was indeed president-elect, I wept.
