Nobody makes it alone. Count the rides, the loans, the pep talks and the second chances.

Help mostly arrives in pieces too small to remember: a lift somewhere, a bit of money in the right week, somebody saying the encouraging thing on a day it mattered. None of it looks like much on its own, which is why a finished story leaves it out so easily. Counted up, it is usually a long list and a humbling one.

Make the inventory once, properly, with names beside the items. It changes how you hold your own progress, and it makes you far likelier to be someone else’s unremembered lift later.