“I want to be brave again.”

These words, when she spoke them aloud, stopped me in my tracks.

It’s time.

You’ve been hanging on for months, years, maybe even decades. You’ve taped the picture on the mirror, made it the homepage on your desktop, and you look at it every single day. So I’m telling you now, it’s time.

Shortly after I graduated college - my favorite professor - who had painted an orange trapezoid in the breakfast nook of her kitchen just because she could - looked out her window and sipped her coffee.