Mom and Tag - Olivia Newport

Photo by Larry Mohr

I spent three weeks with my mom in the middle of the summer, but I took my work with me. “Have laptop, will write” and all that. When I’m wrapped up in a story, I can get pretty driven.

One evening my mother said,

“You should quit. You’ve been working all day.”

She was right on both counts. I put in a lot of hours that day, cranked out a lot of words. It was time to stop.

Sometimes we depend on other people who have our best interests at heart to tell us what we need to hear. We need people in our lives we can trust to do this for us.

• What have you needed someone else to tell you for your own good? What difference did it make in your life?