This is the final sentence of Hua Hsu’s memoir. He is thanking his therapist for helping him deal with the death of his best friend. I imagine his therapist smiled because she knew that writing a memoir based on trauma is difficult. In fact, Hsu spent more than twenty years writing this book. He challenged himself to write “of love and duty, not just anger and hatred” so that it “would be filled with dreams, and the memory of having once looked to the future, and an eagerness to dream again.” This nuanced and beautiful book won the Pulitzer Prize.
Hsu, Hua. Stay True. Doubleday, 2022, p. 193.