Parker Palmer quotes this wonderful opening line from a poem by May Sarton in his collection of autobiographical essays Let Your Life Speak. For him, the process of “becoming” meant taking many wrong turns before finding the right ones. People who know him only as the highly successful best-selling author of The Courage to Teach might be surprised — and moved — by how hard-won his discoveries were. I love this book because Palmer writes frankly about the lessons he learned (sometimes the hard way) during his lifelong quest to become the person he was meant to be.
Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 2000), 9.