My copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s complete works is marked up with a zillion underlines and notes in the margins. It is colored with strips of sticky notes poking out of the top and sides of the volume. And his essay ‘Self-Reliance’ has been one of my greatest sources of strength as a single mother and a survivor of extreme religion (polygamy) and two divorces. I have broken the essay down into sections and will (along with other sacred texts and contemporary authors) explore the brilliance and genius of his ideas as they apply to a life today.