Liz Mills

Healing has many different paths, some of which are bananas, like jumping off mountains.

And all of them are hard, but it's worth it.

It's taken a huge amount of courage over the past two years for me to learn how to simultaneously hold grief and devastation with joy and hope.

William was the one who showed me there's such beauty on the other side of bravery.

The video ended.

I was devastated.

It felt irrecoverable.

I could not imagine watching this video.

It sickened me.

But I paused, and truly, it took a few seconds.

I realized the magic in it, because William really was Houdini.

He was always escaping all the way to the very end.

He escaped social norms, the predetermined path, the idea that the way things are are the way they're supposed to be.

He evaded that misconception we all have that the

possibilities presented to us in life are representative of all our actual options.

He didn't escape death, obviously, but none of us will.

And my God, did he show me the extraordinary beauty of a life well lived.