“None of us know what will happen. Don’t spend time worrying about it. Make the most beautiful thing you can. Try to do that every day. That’s it.” – Laurie Anderson

Sarah Swandell is a writer, reader, songwriter, pastor, wife, and mother. Find her latest essay in So Heavy a Weight, published August 2025, or check out her short story “Totality,” the most read story of 2024 on The Hopkins Review‘s website. Other publications include The Sun, Birthing Magazine, The Christian Century, Coffee + Crumbs, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and 100 Word Story. Sarah studies in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.