Julie Yip Williams Quotes

Live while you’re living, friends.

Dying has taught me a great deal about living—about facing hard truths consciously, about embracing the suffering as well as the joy.

Believe what you need to believe in order to find comfort and peace with the inevitable fate that is common to every living thing on this planet. Death awaits us all; one can choose to run in fear from it or one can face it head-on with thoughtfulness, and from that thoughtfulness peace and serenity.

Walk through the fire and you will emerge on the other end, whole and stronger. I promise. You will ultimately find truth and beauty and wisdom and peace. You will understand that nothing lasts forever, not pain, or joy. You will understand that joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation. Paradoxes about in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them.

The worth of a person’s life lies not in the number of years lived; rather it rests on how well that person has absorbed the lessons of that life, how well that person has come to understand and distill the multiple, messy aspects of the human experience.

I think God is beyond what my little, limited, human brain can fathom. But, perhaps, something my limitless soul can just being to grasp in my moments of utmost clarity.

Each of us has a story. Each of us has experiences from which we can draw strength and that can serve as the basis of our faith. It is just a matter of whether we are willing to dwell in often unpleasant memories, to extract the lessons of our history, to find the secrets of the journeys of our souls.

So much of life’s hardship becomes more bearable when you are able to build and lean on a network of loyalty, support, and love, and gather around you people...who will stand by you and help you. But the thing is you have to let them in; you have to let them see the heartache, pain, and vulnerability, and not cloak those things in a shameful darkness, and then you have to let those people who care about you help you.

It is in the acceptance of truth that real wisdom and peace come. It is in the acceptance of truth that real living begins. Conversely, avoidance of truth is the denial of life.

Dying has taught me a great deal about living — about facing hard truths consciously, about embracing the suffering as well as the joy. Wrapping my arms around the hard parts was perhaps the great liberating experience of my life.

But I do know that there is incredible value in pain and suffering, if you allow yourself to experience it, to cry, to feel sorrow and grief, to hurt. Walk through the fire and you will emerge on the other end, whole and stronger. I promise. You will ultimately find truth and beauty and wisdom and peace. You will understand that nothing lasts forever, not pain, or joy. You will understand that joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation. Paradoxes abound in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them.

Life is not fair. You would be foolish to expect fairness, at least when it comes to matters of life and death, matters outside the scope of the law, matters that cannot be engineered or manipulated by human effort, matters that are distinctly the domain of God or luck or fate or some other unknowable, incomprehensible force.

For me, raging and raging like a wild, irrational beast, denying one’s own mortality, clinging to delusion and false hopes, pursuing treatment at the cost of living in the moment, sacrificing one’s quality of life for the sake of quantity, none of this is graceful or dignified, and all of it denies us our contemplative and evolved humanity; such acts do not cultivate an invincible spirit; such acts are not testaments to inner strength and fortitude. For me, true inner strength lies in facing death with serenity, in recognizing that death is not the enemy but simply an inevitable part of life.

Well, I'm here to play the game, and I choose not to live or die by what the odds-makers say. I choose not to put faith in percentages that were assembled by some anonymous researcher looking at a bunch of impersonal data points. Instead, I choose to put faith in me, in my body, mind, and spirit. In those parts of me that are already so practiced in the art of defying the odds.

Live a life worth living. Live thoroughly and completely, thoughtfully, gratefully, courageously, and wisely. Live!

incredible value in pain and suffering, if you allow yourself to experience it, to cry, to feel sorrow and grief, to hurt. Walk through the fire and you will emerge on the other end, whole and stronger. I promise. You will ultimately find truth and beauty and wisdom and peace.

understand that nothing lasts forever, not pain, or joy. You will understand that joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation. Paradoxes abound in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them.

Yes, I suppose that my death will diminish you, but I also understand now that my living and fighting makes you greater than you are. We humans are resilient little bugs. And indeed, anyone who chooses to live and fight and show by example the power of the human spirit that we all share, and its determination to persevere against the brutalities of what life can bring, strengthens us all with a sense of the tremendous potential and fortitude that lie within each of us, a potential that is realized only when truly tested.

You will understand that nothing lasts forever, not pain, or joy. You will understand that joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation. Paradoxes abound in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them.

Well, I’m here to play the game, and I choose not to live and die by what the oddsmakers say. I choose not to put faith in percentages that were assembled by some anonymous researcher looking at a bunch of impersonal data points. Instead, I choose to put faith in me, in my body, mind, and spirit, in those parts of me that are already so practiced in the art of defying the odds. Coach Taylor always told his ragtag Dillon High School Panther football team on Friday Night Lights, “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose!” I have clear eyes and a full heart.

Paradoxes abound in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them.

Walk through the fire and you will emerge on the other end, whole and stronger. I promise. You will ultimately find truth and beauty and wisdom and peace.

Wordsworth is not without advice for us: What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Anyone who raises young children understands the oftentimes soul-crushing monotony of life’s routines, of battling through fatigue to get up every morning, of rushing the kids off to school, of withstanding the stresses of the oh-so-necessary paying job, of cooking healthy dinners that will likely go uneaten by picky children, of relentlessly negotiating with the kids over when to brush teeth and what clothes to wear the next day and what treats they can have if they eat tomorrow’s lunch.

In its paralysis, the mind cannot form contingency plans; it cannot be brave and bold and forward thinking; it cannot accept what is without running from what will be.

I believe, as I have always believed, that in honesty — a brutal yet kind and thoughtful honesty — we ultimately find not vulnerability, shame, and disgrace, but liberation, healing, and wholeness.

Similarly, there comes a time when one must recognize the futility of continuing the personal physical fight against cancer, when chemo is no longer a desirable option, when one should begin the process of saying goodbye and understand that death is not the enemy, but merely the next part of life. Determining that time is a deliberation that each of us must make with her own heart and soul. This is what Kathryn has done; she respects the force of nature acting on her body and has no delusions about somehow still overcoming; she made the cogent decision to evacuate ahead of the hurricane. To me, she has won her war against cancer so valiantly fought in the nonphysical realm. Yet

These are the times in life when we feel almost more than we are capable of feeling. These are the moments when—paradoxically, as we are closest to death—we are most painfully and vividly alive.