Katrina Kenison Quotes

When we focus on what is good and beautiful in someone, whether or not we think that they "deserve" it, the good and beautiful are strengthened merely by the light of our attention.

We are the windows through which our children first see the world. Let us be conscious of the view.

Life finds its balance. Children grow up. Second chances come along. In the meantime, I could choose to savor this moment. What good would it do to allow annoyance to interfere with gratitude?

Meaning and purpose come not from accomplishing great things in the world, but simply from loving those who are right in front of you, doing all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place where you are.

Not a day goes by that I don't still need to remind myself that my life is not just what's handed to me, nor is it my list of obligations, my accomplishments or failures, or what my family is up to, but rather it is what I choose, day in and day out, to make of it all. When I am able simply to be with things as they are, able to accept the day's challenges without judging, reaching, or wishing for something else, I feel as if I am receiving the privilege, coming a step closer to being myself. It's when I get lost in the day's details, or so caught up in worries about what might be, that I miss the beauty of what is.

...there is no such thing as a charmed life, not for any of us, no matter where we live or how mindfully we attend to the tasks at hand. But there are charmed moments, all the time, in every life and in every day, if we are only awake enough to experience them when they come and wise enough to appreciate them.

Now I see that the journey was never meant to lead to some new and improved version of me; that it has always been about coming home to who I already am.

we can learn to trust our maternal selves and to have faith in the innate goodness and purity of our children - even when we feel overwhelmed and the kids are pushing all our buttons. we can support one another....we can be understanding of each other and easier on ourselves.

I want to hold on tight to everything and everyone I cherished and, at the same time, saw in a way I never had before that living on this earth, growing older, and growing up in the true sense of the word is really about learning how to let go.

At times, my nostalgia for our family life as it used to be--for our own imperfect, cherished, irretrievable past--is nearly overwhelming.

Life feels precious. It is.

Magic wasn't something I had to go in search of; it was here, within me, all the time. When hearts are open, when love is flowing, magic happens.

Perhaps the real point of life is simply to wear us down until we have no choice but to start abandoning our defenses. We learn that the way things are is simply the way they are meant to be right now, and then, suddenly, at long last, we catch a glimpse of the abundance in the moment--abundance even in the face of things falling apart.

It's easy, given the times we live in and the implicit messages we absorb each day, to equeate a good life with having a lot and doing a lot. So it's also easy to fall into believing that our children, if they are to succeed in life, need to be terrific at everything, and that it's up to us to make sure that they are-to keep them on track through tougher course loads, more activities, more competitive sports, more summer programs. But in all our well-intentioned efforts to do the right thing for our children, we may be failing to provide them with something that is truly essential-the time and space they need to wake up to themselves, to grow acquainted with their own innate gifts, to dream their dreams and discover their true natures.

When we focus on what is good and beautiful in someone, whether or not we think that they “deserve” it, the good and the beautiful are strengthened merely by the light of our attention.

A balanced life has a rhythym. But we live in a time, and in a culture, that encourages everyone to just move faster. I'm learning that if I don't take the time to tune in to my own more deliberate pace, I end up moving to someone else's, the speed of events around me setting a tempo that leaves me feeling scattered and out of touch with myself. I know now that I can't write fast; that words, my own thoughts and ideas, come to the surface slowly and in silence. A close relationship with myself requires slowness. Intimacy with my husband and guarded teenage sons requires slowness. A good conversation can't be hurried, it needs time in which to meander its way to revelation and insight. Even cooking dinner with care and attention is slow work. A thoughtful life is not rushed.

I know I can't make time slow down, can't hold our life as it is in a freeze frame or slow my children's inexorable journeys into adulthood and lives of their own. But I can celebrate those journeys by bearing witness to them, by paying attention, and, perhaps most of all, by carrying on with my own growth and becoming. Now it dawns on me that the only way I can figure out what I'm meant to be doing is to try to understand who I'm meant to be...I will not waste this life, not one hour, not one minute. I will not take for granted the blessing of our being here...I will give thanks...

This, I suspect, is the territory that lies just ahead and around the curve of today. A place where loss grows more familiar, where joy is harmonized by sorrow, where endings outnumber beginnings, and where kindness becomes a sacrament.

One of the greatest challenges I've faced as a mother-especially in these anxious, winner-takes-all times-is the need to resist the urge to accept someone else's definition of success and to try to figure out, instead, what really is best for my own children, what unique combination of structure and freedom, nurturing and challenge, education and exploration, each of them needs in order to grow and bloom.

Reading, reading actively, strengthens the soul.

Growth and transformation occur not by changing who we are, but as we summon the courage to be who we are.

If some essential part of me was already disappearing as my children moved into increasingly wider orbits, well then, I wanted to rech out and claim something else to take its place.

One thing we've learned this summer is that a house is not an end in itself, any more than "home" is just one geographic location where things feel safe and familiar. Home can be anyplace in which we create our own sense of rest and peace as we tend to the spaces in which we eat and sleep and play. It is a place that we create and re-create in every moment, at every stage of our lives, a place where the plain and common becomes cherished and the ordinary becomes sacred.

...home is less a location than a discipline. It is a way of being, a domestic, considered attention to familiar routines and the small, essential details of everyday life. From now on, I promised myself, home would be wherever I was, not the place that I one day hoped it to be. I would create it by being present. I would try to do better.

If you want to be reborn,' it is written in the Tao Te Ching, 'let yourself die.' This is what I've been having trouble with, the fact that letting go can feel, at times, like a death. Someday, I know, I will lose everything. All the small deaths along the way are practice runs for the big ones, asking us to learn to be present, to grow in faith, to be grateful for what is. Life is finite and short. But this new task, figuring out how to let go of so much that has been precious -- my children, my youth, my life as I know it -- can feel like a bitter foretaste of other losses yet to come.

I don't wish for the red house back, not really, yet in a way, I wish for everything back that ever was, everything that once seemed like forever and yet has vanished . . . Standing here on an empty hilltop in New Hampshire, as a bulldozer slowly pushes the debris of a small red house into a neat pile, I allow, just for a moment, the past to push hard against the walls of my heart. Being alive, it seems, means learning to bear the weight of the passing of all things. It means finding a way to lightly hold all the places we've loved and left anyway, all the moments and days and years that have already been lived and lost to memory, even as we live on in the here and now, knowing full well that this moment, too, is already gone. It means, always, allowing for the hard truth of endings. It means, too, keeping faith in beginnings.

When we focus on what is good and beautiful in someone, whether or not we think that they "deserve" it, the good and beautiful are strengthened merely by the light of our attention. When we choose to see and appreciate what is good and beautiful in our children, that goodness can't help but grow, and their beauty blossoms forth.

slight shifts in imagination can have deeper and more lasting impact on our lives than major efforts at change.

Stay focused on what is beautiful and abundant even as illness carves more and more of what you love away

Home was this whole perfectly contained universe--town, friends, acquaintances, the streets we traveled every day...And we were about to leave it all.

When we focus on what is good and beautiful in someone, whether or not we think that they 'deserve' it, the good and the beautiful are strengthened merely by the light of our attention.

Perhaps it's human nature: We want to shield our children from pain, and what we get instead is life and heartache and lessons that bring us to our knees. Sooner or later we are handed the brute, necessary curriculum of surrender, we have no choice, then but to bow our heads and learn. We struggle to accept that our children's destinies are not ours to write, their battles not ours to fight, their bruises not ours to bear, nor their victories ours to take credit for. We learn humility and how to ask for help. We learn to let go even when every fiber of our being yearns to hold on even tighter.

Perhaps it's human nature: We want to shield our children from pain, and what we get instead is life and heartache and lessons that bring us to our knees. Sooner or later we are handed the brute, necessary curriculum of surrender, we have no choice, then but to bow our heads and learn. We struggle to accept that our children's destinies are not ours to write, their battles not ours to fight, their bruises not ours to bear, nor their victories ours to take credit for. We learn humility and how to ask for help. We learn to let go even when every fiber of our being yearns to hold on even tighter.

Many of us attend a few yoga classes and find that we like the glimpse of another way of life that yoga offers. We are delighted by the way we feel after class and we are pleasantly surprised as certain behaviors start to fall away. Perhaps we no longer need coffee in the morning; or staying out late at night becomes less attractive; or we find ourselves calmer and more compassionate. Suddenly we're convinced that we've hit upon a painless way to solve all our problems. Sadly, this is not the case. Practice is not a substitute for the difficult work of renunciation. The postures and breath work that you do in a typical yoga class will change your life. These practices—asana and pranayama—suffuse us with the energy we need to take on the hard choices and to endure the inevitable highs and lows. What yoga practice will not do, however, is take the place of the hard lessons each of us has to learn in order to mature spiritually.

Losing this part of my life, this time of being a mother to growing children, is indeed an ending. For months, I've carried that quiet sorrow, getting used to its heaviness, the way one learns to live with the chronic soreness of a joint, a tenderness in wrist or knee. What I long to do now is to let the sadness go as well, to have faith that even as my sons graduate from high school and leave home, and this phase of our family life draws to a close, there will be new beginnings not just for them, but for all of us.

I take the seashell from my jeans pocket and rub my fingers across its silken, indented surface, shallow as my own open hand. This chalice, subtly shaped by some divine intelligence to allow water to flow in and out with ease, is what I aspire to become: a vessel through which feelings can pour in and spill right out again, without all the grasping and holding that obstructs the flow. Can I be as serene and simple as this bleached shell, rubbed smooth by wind and water, receiving and releasing, filling and emptying and filling again, eternally receptive to the currents of life?

When the Going Gets Tough… When the going gets tough may I resist my first impulse to wade in, fix, explain, resolve, and restore. May I sit down instead. When the going gets tough may I be quiet. May I steep for a while in stillness. When the going gets tough may I have faith that things are unfolding as they are meant to. May I remember that my life is what it is, not what I ask for. May I find the strength to bear it, the grace to accept it, the faith to embrace it. When the going gets tough may I practice with what I’m given, rather than wish for something else. When the going gets tough may I assume nothing. May I not take it personally. May I opt for trust over doubt, compassion over suspicion, vulnerability over vengeance. When the going gets tough may I open my heart before I open my mouth. When the going gets tough may I be the first to apologize. May I leave it at that. May I bend with all my being toward forgiveness. When the going gets tough may I look for a door to step through rather than a wall to hide behind. When the going gets tough may I turn my gaze up to the sky above my head, rather than down to the mess at my feet. May I count my blessings. When the going gets tough may I pause, reach out a hand, and make the way easier for someone else. When the going gets tough may I remember that I’m not alone. May I be kind. When the going gets tough may I choose love over fear. Every time.

Moment by moment we have the opportunity to say yes, to move into our lives and open ourselves to the adventure...

rushing headlong into the next thing, we fail to appreciate the blessing of the only thing we can really claim as ours to own, the present moment.

To silence the chatter in my mind so the quiet voice of my soul might be allowed to speak.

My life isn’t about form anymore, it’s about content. It’s true that I don’t always get to choose the content, but I can decide what to do with it.

• The emptiness surrounds me. I am a mother without a child. An aging woman whose arms still feel the weight of small bodies held close, whose hands recall the outlived tasks of motherhood :brushing tears from a cheek, bandaging a pinkie finger, buttering toast, testing a bath. I wonder if there is some new calling or purpose awaiting me in the next phase of life that might compare with the joys and challenges of work and motherhood and family. I wonder if the best days are behind me, and whether I can find a new sense of meaning and identity in the years to come. Shall I hold tight to what I know and do what I’ve always done? Or do I have what it takes to create something new in my life, to discover what is important to me now, and to claim that, become that? Pg12

• And then she reached out and embraced her life as it already was, only more fiercely. Not for an overseas trip of a lifetime, fancy dinners out, or a string of intense experiences. All she wanted was her own ordinary days, the more of them the better. She wanted to read the newspaper at the breakfast table, take a walk with her friends, weed the garden, make her sons favorite cake, cook dinner, watch tv with her husband, take the dog outside, and head upstairs to bed with a book in her hand. She wanted more of what she already had. Pg25

If grief and gratitude are kindred emotions, two sides of a coin, than courage is what it takes to accommodate both at once, to stay focused on what is beautiful and abundant even as illness carves more and more of what you love away. Pg 26

It is so easy to overlook the wonder of life until something threatens to snatch it from us. How willingly we sacrifice the days of our lives to trivial distractions-silly computer games, unnecessary errands, useless worry. We get caught up in our own petty concerns and miss the beauty unfolding right in front of us. Rushing headlong into the next thing, we fail to appreciate the blessing of the only thing we can really claim as our own, the present moment. We toss a few balls in the air and start juggling, as fast as we can- all in the effort to do a little more, to exert a bit more control, to feel more secure or more worthy or more accomplished. But there is nothing quite like a critical diagnosis, with its ticket to the world of hospital rooms and treatment plans, to bring all the balls crashing back to earth. Suddenly, when life hangs in the balance, we wish we could have this lost moments back, wish we could live them differently, with more love, more attention, more patience. With more gratitude for all we blindly took for granted. Pg27

I feel as if I’ve lost myself,’ she says. “All these years of taking care of everyone else, of feeling as if I always have to be right here, making sure every meal gets on the table and that everyone’s needs are met. I always wanted to do it, but I also really believed that what was going on in everyone else’s life was more important than what was going on in mine. I guess I believed that nothing very important was going on in mine.” Pg 53

Ever since childhood, I’ve felt a tension between who I think I should be-- smarter, more confident, more creative, more adventurous, more out going- and who I am: quiet, introspective, sensitive, and solitary. If I could only be better, I think- a better wife, a better mother, a better writer, a better human- then I would feel more sure of myself and more worthy. More deserving of life.

What would it mean if my purpose, my path, from this moment on were really this simple: to be able to look into the eyes of another with such such compassion, such acceptance, such unconditional tenderness and devotion? To offer as much love to others. It would mean seeing the vastness of my own soul and finally embracing it fully, without fear or judgement. It would mean standing in the world in all my vulnerability, wide open, and knowing that even when I have no idea what. To do next, I can choose to do the loving thing, and it will be enough. It would mean letting go of the notion that I can make people love me by doing things for them or by acting a certain way, and believing that I am lovable just as I am. It would mean loving others that way too, just as they are and simply for being human. Pg 121

How easy it is to miss the gift of who we are, because we’re so busy trying to become somebody else. Maybe all I really need to do- all anyone needs to do- is trust in what we love and continue to do that.

What would happen, I wonder, if I stopped questioning and doubting what I do, stopped judging my own efforts, stopped critiquing the sentences I write, and begin instead to simply trust the process- not just the ups and downs of my work, but everything else as well, the endlessly evolving process of life itself?

I still struggle with the belief that I should be producing something more tangible or useful in the world. ‘You should do work that makes a real difference,’ scolds the voice in my head.... I worried I was being self- indulgent, spending hour after hour engaged in the slow, halting process of moving from experience to thought to word. What, really, was the point? Why would anyone else care? Why should I? I am coming to believe that there is room in the world for all our stories.

It is not for me to Judge the gifts I have to offer the world, but it is up to me to summon the courage to offer them.

My real task is not to try to reinvent myself or to transcend my life after all, but to inhabit it more fully, to appreciate it, and to thoughtfully tend whats already here. .. embracing and welcoming the person I actually am and quietly making the contribution I have to offer- whether its a manuscript page or an email to my old next-door neighbor. What matters is not the grandness of the gesture, but its source. If I do my work, all of it, with love, then it is worthy.

I was so busy trying to figure out what I should be doing that I couldn’t see the truth: All I really needed to do was focus on who I wanted to be. Love is the gift I’ve had to offer all along, in all its different forms. I just didn’t ever quite believe that it-or I- was enough.

A good life is always partly a matter of luck, but it is also a choice we make for ourselves- a choice of deliberation, attention, creativity, limits. A choice predicated on this belief: I am worthy.

The years from here on in will be what I make of them.

As time goes on, I find myself caring less about fitting in, and more about nurturing those relationships that fit who I truly am.

As always after saying goodbye to one one of my boys, I feel a touch of nostalgia for everything that’s over. I suppose it shall always be so. But I also know now that it’s okay to feel it, to allow my heart its fullness for whats gone as well as its gratitude for all that is good.

Eva’s life on Main Street stands, for me, as a testament to the fact that meaning and purpose come not from accomplishing great things in the world, but simply from loving those who are right in front of you, doing all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place where you are. It’s not the doing that makes it special, it’s the loving.

Just for today, live the passionate truth of who you are. Stop looking at what is undone, what you haven’t achieved, where you’ve fallen short. Look instead, into your own heart. If your journey brings you to a choice between love and fear, choose love.Be brave enough to be vulnerable. Allow yourself to be seen- dancing and falling, and failing and trying again. You are loved, and all that you have to offer is deeply needed..... Let go and breathe into the goodness that you already are... resist nothing, let life carry you. You have work to do. Begin it.

clearly, I am going to need a lot more practice—practice in being present, practice in feeling my feelings and in letting them go, practice in loving, in accepting, and especially practice in holding those most dear to me with a lighter touch. At least I have learned this: It all is a practice. I just have to show up and keep on practicing. Breathe. Relax. Feel. Watch. Allow.