Recently, my essayist friends were posting on Facebook about the new Best American Essays, due out any day. A certain online retailer allows you to virtually page through books, and my friends were searching the back matter for their own names. Twenty-three essays are published in full, the “best” of 2015. But many more are listed in the back as “notable” essays. These essays are the runners up, the honorable mentions — and it’s quite an honor to be on the list.

A day of Facebook posts scrolled by before it occurred to me to look for my own name. I had to search a few times; the pages available for preview change with each refresh of the site. But then I found it, the page with the “Gs.” And my own name.

I am beyond thrilled that my essay “Twenty Hours and Ten Minutes of Therapy,” originally published in The Gettysburg Review and reprinted by Utne Reader, is a notable essay of 2015.

I spent much of the summer of 2013 writing that essay, which emerged after I listened to the cassette tapes of my therapy sessions when I was coming out over a quarter century ago. While I knew what I wanted to say in the essay, finding the best structure was a challenge. My writing group’s feedback made all the difference, and when it was finished, I knew it was one of the best — if not the best — pieces I’d ever written.

Among the notables are some of my biggest influences, writers like Bernard Cooper, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Rebecca Solnit, Ira Sukrungruang, and Ander Monson. It’s an honor to be in their company.