β
We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
β
β
Joseph Campbell
β
Thereβs no such thing as ruining your life. Lifeβs a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.
β
β
Sophie Kinsella (The Undomestic Goddess)
β
You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.
β
β
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
β
Life doesnβt get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
β
i want to apologize to all the women i have called beautiful
before iβve called them intelligent or brave
i am sorry i made it sound as though
something as simple as what youβre born with
is all you have to be proud of
when you have broken mountains with your wit
from now on i will say things like
you are resilient, or you are extraordinary
not because i donβt think youβre beautiful
but because i need you to know
you are more than that
β
β
Rupi Kaur
β
Successful people have no fear of failure. But unsuccessful people do. Successful people have the resilience to face up to failureβlearn the lessons and adapt from it.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
If I've learned one lesson from all that's happened to me, it's that there is no such thing as the biggest mistake of your existence. There's no such thing as ruining your life. Life's a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.
β
β
Sophie Kinsella (The Undomestic Goddess)
β
May I write words more naked than flesh,
stronger than bone, more resilient than
sinew, sensitive than nerve.
β
β
Sappho
β
You are so confident," he says to me. "You're stubborn and resilient. So brave. So strong. So inhumanly beautiful. You could conquer the world.
β
β
Tahereh Mafi (Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2))
β
I feel like a constellation of wounds, held together with string and stubbornness.
β
β
Holly Black (The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air, #3))
β
Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.
β
β
Elizabeth Edwards
β
What helps you persevere is your resilience and commitment.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.
β
β
Robert Jordan (The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time, #5))
β
The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.
β
β
Laura Hillenbrand (Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption)
β
My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.
β
β
Steve Goodier
β
A good half of the art of living is resilience.
β
β
Alain de Botton
β
And life
definitely
doesn't want me
To just let it
tell
me
that the
girl
I met,
The
beautiful, amazing, strong, resilient girl
That I fell so
hard
for
Should only come in
third
Life
knows.
Life is trying to
tell
ne
That the
girl
I
love
The girl I fell
So
hard
for?
There's room for her in
first.
I'm putting
her
first.
β
β
Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
β
It's a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.
β
β
Germany Kent
β
βHold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else.
β
β
Henry Ward Beecher
β
mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.
β
β
Joseph Heller
β
Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.
β
β
Laura Hillenbrand (Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption)
β
I believe everything happens for a reason. Whether it is decided by the Mother, or the Cauldron, or some sort of tapestry of Fate, I don't know. I don't really care. But I am grateful for it, whatever it is. Grateful that it brought you all into my life. If it hadn't... I might have become as awful as that prick we're going to face today. If I had not met an Illyrian warrior-in-training," he said to Cassian, "I would not have known the true depths of strength, of resilience, of honor and loyalty." Cassian's eyes gleamed bright. Rhys said to Azriel, "If I had not met a shadowsinger, I would not have known that it is the family you make, not the one you are born into, that matters. I would not have known what it is to truly hope, even when the world tells you to despair." Azriel bowed his head in thanks.
Mor was already crying when Rhys spoke to her. "If I had not met my cousin, I would neer have learned that light can be found in even the darkest of hells. That kidness can thrive even amongst cruelty." She wiped away her teas as she nodded.
I waited for Amren to offer a retort. But she was only waiting.
Rhys bowed his head to her. "If I had not met a tiny monster who hoards jewels more fiercely than a firedrake..." A quite laugh from all of us at that. Rhys smiled softly. "My own power would have consumed me long ago."
Rhys squeezed my hand as he looked to me at last. "And if I had not met my mate..." His words failed him as silver lined his eyes.
He said down the bond, I would have waited five hundred more years for you. A thousand years. And if this was all the time we were allowed to have... The wait was worth it.
He wiped away the tears sliding down my face. "I believe that everything happened, exactly the way it had to... so I could find you." He kissed another tear away.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3))
β
There is strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.
β
β
Jodi Picoult (My Sisterβs Keeper)
β
Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.
β
β
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder)
β
If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces.β
[Blueprint for a Breakthrough (2013)]
β
β
Shane L. Koyczan
β
Then wake up my sweet,Β wake up knowing that your future is to be happy, and that your heart will heal.
β
β
Barbara Sontheimer (Victor's Blessing)
β
It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.
β
β
James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time)
β
The struggles we endure today will be the βgood old daysβ we laugh about tomorrow.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple.
β
β
Gillian Flynn (Dark Places)
β
Without dignity, identity is erased.
β
β
Laura Hillenbrand (Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption)
β
A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go.
β
β
Laura Hillenbrand (Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption)
β
We cannot wait for the other shoe to drop, when the road becomes unendurably bumpy. If the aura of truth starts to wane and the light of the sky begins to splinter, only resilience can settle things. (βSteaming aheadβ)
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
We should never despair. Beyond, there is hope! In the meantime, there is resilience. ("Waiting for Eureka")
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
It is your strength and determination that have infuriated me. That strength and resilience has also made me fall in love with you.
β
β
Aleatha Romig (Consequences (Consequences, #1))
β
No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That's the only way to keep the roads clear.
β
β
Greg Kincaid
β
we all move forward when
we recognize how resilient
and striking the women
around us are
β
β
Rupi Kaur (milk and honey)
β
It does not matter how strong your gravity is, we were always meant to fly.
β
β
Sarah Kay
β
...children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.
β
β
Ishmael Beah (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier)
β
Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don't yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it's actually going to be possible.
β
β
Angela Y. Davis
β
He turned and smiled resolvedly at her.Β He knew no one else would ever understand that for Arvellen, sex only had to do with friendship and of pleasing one another, and nothing at all to do with what she considered to be the silly confines of love or marriage.
β
β
Barbara Sontheimer (Victor's Blessing)
β
The heart is resilient and forgiving, it is the mind that causes us stress.
β
β
Alexandra Elle (Words from a Wanderer)
β
We can always hope, but we must not live on hope. Let us step beyond expectations, and remain resilient. Let us breathe consciously without fright, striving to take over our grail of freedom. ("Expectations")
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
If life beats us up, while we have our back to the wall, there is no other way than exorcising fear and using the seeds of resilience stored in the attic of our imagination. ("Transcendental meditation")
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
A universal vision and a joint interest are steppingstones for full-blown empathy, and explicitly through empathy, we seize the pulsating assets of βsharing,β sharing precious values with the others. (βResilienceβ)
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
No one is going to come help you. No one's coming to save you.
β
β
David Goggins (Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds)
β
When a river of tears and a load of grief keep on flowing from a mountain of broken trust, feelings may relentlessly besiege the stronghold of our flesh. Only a timely adjustment with our mental compass can shore up confidence, resilience; and reliance. ("Taken for a ride")
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
He loves her laugh; that sharp, sudden sound; the cynical laugh that always comes too quick, like itβs ripped out of her. He loves her quick, confident grin. He loves her resilience, her bravery, even her impulsiveness. Sheβs everything heβs not: unbound, reckless, free. Heβs never known anyone like her. She terrifies him, and he loves her so much it hurts.
β
β
R.F. Kuang (The Drowning Faith (The Poppy War, #2.5))
β
In discovering the world, the "I" must meet otherness and converge with the "we." If we are prepared to leave our castle's safety, we can confront our sensitiveness with "outwardness", enhance our insight and tune up our pattern of life. (βResilienceβ)
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
If we feel like deers in headlights, let us tread lightly, back up for some time, and rebound later while building on our desire to empower our backbone and guts, restore our identity and kindle our fury of living. ("Resilience")
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
A haunting memory flooded over Ethan when his own little sister had died. He had not thought of her in years! He glanced at the other chairs that sat empty around the table and wondered how different, or better his life would have been if she had lived. He tried to imagine her sitting there, but had trouble conjuring up her face.
β
β
Barbara Sontheimer (Victor's Blessing)
β
Strong people alone know how to organize their suffering so as to bear only the most necessary pain.
β
β
Emil Dorian (Quality of Witness: A Romanian Diary, 1937-1944)
β
It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment.
β
β
Bram Stoker (Dracula)
β
I know youβre strong and so resilient itβs fucking unbelievable, but you donβt have to always be strong with me. Itβs okay to not be okay when youβre with me β¦ Itβs my duty as your husband to make sure you feel safe enough to be real.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (The βCrown of Gilded Bones (Blood and Ash, #3))
β
We are what we are: a handful of dust, and although life remains a temporal enterprise, we recognize we have a mission. Through resilience and empathy, we can take a walk on the path of thought and wonder and brighten up the hazy remains of the day. (βA handful of dustβ)
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren't paying any attention to you. It's your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. But you have to disregard yourself as completely as possible. If you fail the first time then you'll just have to try harder the second time. After all, there's no real reason why you should fail. Just stop thinking about yourself.
β
β
Eleanor Roosevelt (You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life)
β
I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.
β
β
Howard Zinn (You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times)
β
She is an able negotiator and a strong ally." Pickering said, as his eyes caressed her lovely face.Β He noticed both her arms were wrapped tightly around Victor's, and that she looked up at him with such commitment that it made his cynical view of love soften.Β Reminding him bittersweetly of how he had felt once, a very long time ago.
β
β
Barbara Sontheimer (Victor's Blessing)
β
What God asks of men, said [Billy] Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of that faith. To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.
β
β
Laura Hillenbrand (Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption)
β
We may feel the world is slipping out of our hands and recognize that the core of our conceived blueprint is escaping us. Let us challenge, then, a point of resilience and get out of the weeds, clear our mind and figure out "who is who" in our lives, and gauge what is valuable in our mind. ("The dirty bike")
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
It's in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
With her knee in our neck, the goddess of the pandemics has paralyzed us and hindered many to breathe freely and consciously. Only if we discover the timelessness of the moment, we may happen to encounter the blue sky in our mind and fly high into the light of happy expectations. (βResilienceβ)
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
All incidents which we experience are warily interpreted and translated in the dark chamber of our mind. They inspire us how to behave, how to think, how to act and prompt our predilections and our way of visualizing the world. The mind opens itself then to welcome the enchantments of life or to tear up destructive thinking patterns. The brain becomes truly a precious resilient partner. ( "Camera obscura of the mind" )
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
Whereas some dwell on the bright side of life, enjoying an exciting spectrum of contingencies, and get all the breaks, others live in the confined inner court of their being, cramped within the fence of their mind. Only imagination may arouse a spark of expectation, stir up resilience and create an equitable prospect.
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
And what is there to be joyful about?" I asked honestly, thinking on the images of dead children curled into themselves at the village. Another burst of silent tears streamed down.
"Life, Sophie. They still live. They breathe, they love each other, they find joy in the world around them for no other reason than because they are children. They are resilient. They will always rise above. Always. It is a curious facet of the innocent young.
β
β
Fisher Amelie (Vain (The Seven Deadly, #1))
β
To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength.
β
β
Hannah Gadsby
β
May we not waver to say a blunt βNoβ when push comes to shove. Once we handle the truth, it must be without βifsβ and βbuts.β The air ought to be clean and the water clear. Since haggling with transparency is not in the cards, let us step down from the traditional βIt Is What It Isβ and definitively go for resilience. ("Resilience")
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
Trauma does not have to occur by abuse alone...
β
β
Asa Don Brown (The Effects of Childhood Trauma on Adult Perception and Worldview)
β
A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain.
β
β
Laura Hillenbrand (Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption)
β
When he thought of his history, what resonated with him now was not all that he had suffered but the divine love that he believed had intervened to save him.
β
β
Laura Hillenbrand (Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption)
β
Life's trials will test you, and shape you, but donβt let them change who you are.β
~ Aaron Lauritsen, β100 Days Drive
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
Trying to attain the inaccessible might be a pure waste of time. Still, however, the blunt attempt to challenge the ultimate hurdles to reach the untouchable can kindle a glow in the dusk and become a lighting beacon of resilience and throw us out of ourselves into an inspiring fairytale of horizons to nurture our dreams.
β
β
Erik Pevernagie (Stilling our Mind)
β
Feeling confronted with the absurdity of life may sometimes nurture a personal satisfaction for those who like to set a paramount task or to create a compassionate mission. In so doing, the seal of absurdity becomes less unbearable, while it confers them a βSisyphusβ status that transmutes them into heroes of human resilience. (βSisyphus on the hill.)
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
Feed the soul beauty, and it will heal itself.
β
β
Gregory Dickow (Soul Cure: How to Heal Your Pain and Discover Your Purpose)
β
When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered...the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory
β
β
Marcel Proust
β
I donβt need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And Iβll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.
I will constitute the field.
β
β
Louise GlΓΌck (The Wild Iris)
β
At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.
β
β
Laura Hillenbrand (Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption)
β
One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.
β
β
Alain de Botton
β
When a storm of harassment disturbs our thinking and brings us down to our knees, the umbrella of our imagination can shield us against destructive aggression. It is offering shelter and is teaching us how to conquer ourselves, train our resilience, and grit our teeth. We better learn to adopt the virtue of endurance, as life consists of both βpassionβ and βpatience.β ("The umbrella")
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
Healing comes to the soul through the power of connection. Our connection with God is our connection to healingβspirit, soul, and body
β
β
Gregory Dickow (Soul Cure: How to Heal Your Pain and Discover Your Purpose)
β
I suppose if a man has something once, always something of it remains.
β
β
Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
β
True friends don't come with conditions.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
Never say that you can't do something, or that something seems impossible, or that something can't be done, no matter how discouraging or harrowing it may be; human beings are limited only by what we allow ourselves to be limited by: our own minds. We are each the masters of our own reality; when we become self-aware to this: absolutely anything in the world is possible.
Master yourself, and become king of the world around you. Let no odds, chastisement, exile, doubt, fear, or ANY mental virii prevent you from accomplishing your dreams. Never be a victim of life; be it's conqueror.
β
β
Mike Norton
β
Option A is not available. so let's just kick the shit out of Option B."
Life is never perfect. We all live some form of Option B.
β
β
Sheryl Sandberg (Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy)
β
There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who do not. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.
β
β
JosΓ© N. Harris
β
Self-care is how you take your power back.
β
β
Lalah Delia
β
Without struggle, success has no value.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
I will not be another flower, picked for my beauty and left to die. I will be wild, difficult to find, and impossible to forget.
β
β
Erin Van Vuren
β
I've come to hold the human spirit in the highest regard. Like the body, it struggles to repair itself. As cells fight off infection and conquer illness, the spirit, too, has remarkable resilience. It knows when it is harmed, and it knows when the harm is too much to bare. If it deems the injury too great, the spirit cocoons the wound, in the same fashion that the body forms a cyst around infection, until the time comes that it can deal with it. For some people, that time never comes. Some stay fractured, forever broken. You see them on the street, pushing carts. You see them in the faces of the regulars at the bar.
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Dreamfever (Fever, #4))
β
Some may be more fortunate than others, and many might feel more like second bests, not sure how to survive. Not seeing the light on their path, they keep on living with fear. Albeit social security systems may be supportive existential anxiety subsists, crushing their identity. Only by converting 'fear' into a challenge, we can grit our teeth, strengthen resilience, and brighten up the dimness in our minds. ("A new life with Schengen"")
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
They remained imprisoned in the CICU, kept alive in physicality by mechanical devices and medicinal support, inexorably suffering. I revered their resiliency, though I struggled to understand whether they were truly resilient or if this was a descriptive term I used to assure myself that what we were doing was just. Could they merely represent physical beings at this point, molecular derivatives of carbon and water, void of souls that had moved on months prior once the universe had delivered their inevitable fate, simply kept alive by us physicians, who ourselves clutched desperately to the most favored of our prehistoric binary measures of success: life?
β
β
Dean Mafako (Burned Out)
β
Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places. I learned about these qualities during my bouts with depression. In that deadly darkness, the faculties I had always depended on collapsed. My intellect was useless; my emotions were dead; my will was impotent; my ego was shattered. But from time to time, deep in the thickets of my inner wilderness, I could sense the presence of something that knew how to stay alive even when the rest of me wanted to die. That something was my tough and tenacious soul.
β
β
Parker J. Palmer (A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life : Welcoming the soul and weaving community in a wounded world)
β
From then on, I brainwashed myself into craving discomfort. If it was raining, I would go run. Whenever it started snowing, my mind would say, Get your fucking running shoes on. Sometimes I wussed out and had to deal with it at the Accountability Mirror. But facing that mirror, facing myself, motivated me to fight through uncomfortable experiences, and, as a result, I became tougher. And being tough and resilient helped me meet my goals.
β
β
David Goggins (Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds)
β
Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy baby easy. He is probably strutting the backs among crocuses now with seven Scandinavian mistresses. And I sit, spiderlike, waiting, here, home; Penelope weaving webs of Webster, turning spindles of Tourneur. Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry. I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love: I am here; I wait; and he plays on the banks of the river Cam like a casual faun.
β
β
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
β
But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat.
He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didnβt know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.
So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into peopleβs eyes and became an exasperating expression.
β
β
Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
β
The reality of grief is far different from what others see from the outside. There is pain in this world that you can't be cheered out of. You don't need solutions. You don't need to move on from your grief. You need someone to see your grief, to acknowledge it. You need someone to hold your hands while you stand there in blinking horror, staring at the hole that was your life. Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.
β
β
Megan Devine (It's OK That You're Not OK)
β
Plants and animals donβt fight the winter; they donβt pretend itβs not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but thatβs where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.
β
β
Katherine May (Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times)
β
I met a girl in a U-Haul.
A beautiful girl
And I fell for her.
I fell hard.
Unfortunately, sometimes life gets in the way.
Life definitely got in my way.
It got all up in my damn way,
Life blocked the door with a stack of wooden 2x4's
nailed together and attached to a fifteen inch concrete wall
behind a row of solid steel bars, bolted to a titanium frame that
no matter how hard I shoved against it-
It
wouldn't
budge.
Sometimes life doesn't budge.
It just gets all up in your damn way.
It blocked my plans, my dreams, my desires, my wishes,
my wants, my needs.
It blocked out that beautiful girl
That I fell so hard for.
Life tries to tell you what's best for you
What should be most important to you
What should come in first
Or second
Or third.
I tried so hard to keep it all organized, alphabetized,
stacked in chronological order, everything in its perfect space,
its perfect place.
I thought that's what life wanted me to do.
This is what life needed for me to do.
Right?
Keep it all in sequence?
Sometimes, life gets in your way.
It gets all up in your damn way.
But it doesn't get all up in your damn way because it
wants you to just give up and let it take control. Life doesn't get
all up in your damn way because it just wants you to hand it all
over and be carried along.
Life wants you to fight it.
It wants you to grab an axe and hack through the wood.
It wants you to get a sledgehammer and break through
the concrete.
It wants you to grab a torch and burn through the metal
and steel until you can reach through and grab it.
Life wants you to grab all the organized, the
alphabetized, the chronological, the sequenced. It wants you to
mix it all together,
stir it up,
blend it.
Life doesn't want you to let it tell you that your little
brother should be the only thing that comes first.
Life doesn't want you to let it tell you that your career
and your education should be the only thing that comes in
second.
And life definitely doesn't want me
To just let it tell me
that the girl I met,
The beautiful, strong, amazing, resilient girl
That I fell so hard for
Should only come in third.
Life knows.
Life is trying to tell me
That the girl I love,
The girl I fell
So hard for?
There's room for her in first.
I'm putting her first.
β
β
Colleen Hoover
β
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
β
β
Maya Angelou
β
Solar Eclipse
Each morning
I wake invisible.
I make a needle
from a porcupine quill,
sew feet to legs,
lift spine onto my thighs.
I put on my rib and collarbone.
I pin an ear to my head,
hear the waxwing's yellow cry.
I open my mouth for purple berries,
stick on periwinkle eyes.
I almost know what it is to be seen.
My throat enlarges from anger.
I make a hand to hold my pain.
My heart a hole the size of the sun's eclipse.
I push through the dark circle's
tattered edge of light.
All day I struggle with one hair after another
until the moon moves from the face of the sun
and there is a strange light
as though from a kerosene lamp in a cabin.
I pun on a dress,
a shawl over my shoulders.
My threads knotted and scissors gleaming.
Now I know I am seen.
I have a shadow.
I extend my arms,
dance and chant in the sun's new light.
I put a hat and coat on my shadow,
another larger dress.
I put on more shawls and blouses and underskirts
until even the shadow has substance
β
β
Diane Glancy