Traveling Mercies Quote
Sometimes (what am I saying?, ALL the time) other people can say things better than I can.. These are some examples from Anne Lamott:
"It's so different having a living father who loves you, even someone complex and imperfect. After your father dies, defeat becomes pretty defeating. When he's still alive, there are set backs and heartbreak, but you're still the apple of someone's eye" (225).
"And she is going to dance, dance hungry, dance full, dance each cold astonishing moment, now when she is young and again when she is old."
"I don't know why life isn't constructed to be seamless and safe, why we make such glaring mistakes, things fall so short of our expectations, and our hearts get broken and our kids do scary things and our parents get old and don't always remember to put pants on before they go out from a stroll. I don't know why it's not more like it is in the movies, why things don't come out neatly and lessons can't be learned when in you're in the mood for learning them, why love and grace often come in such motley packaging."
"I was cracking up. It was like a cartoon where something gets hit, and one crack appears, which spiderwebs outward until the whole pane or vase is cracked and hangs suspended for a moment before falling into a pile of powder on the floor"
This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be."
"All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. What I've since discovered is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place, and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it"
"Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation."
"My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable"
"[Her] work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things -- a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer -- and you could also be critically astute and radical and have a minority opinion that was profoundly moral."
"You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you will never completely get over the loss of a beloved person. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly-- that still hurts when the weather is cold-- but you learn to dance with the limp."
"'I liked those ladies! They were helpers, and they danced.' These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced."
"My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone."
"It's so different having a living father who loves you, even someone complex and imperfect. After your father dies, defeat becomes pretty defeating. When he's still alive, there are set backs and heartbreak, but you're still the apple of someone's eye" (225).
"And she is going to dance, dance hungry, dance full, dance each cold astonishing moment, now when she is young and again when she is old."
"I don't know why life isn't constructed to be seamless and safe, why we make such glaring mistakes, things fall so short of our expectations, and our hearts get broken and our kids do scary things and our parents get old and don't always remember to put pants on before they go out from a stroll. I don't know why it's not more like it is in the movies, why things don't come out neatly and lessons can't be learned when in you're in the mood for learning them, why love and grace often come in such motley packaging."
"I was cracking up. It was like a cartoon where something gets hit, and one crack appears, which spiderwebs outward until the whole pane or vase is cracked and hangs suspended for a moment before falling into a pile of powder on the floor"
This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be."
"All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. What I've since discovered is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place, and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it"
"Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation."
"My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable"
"[Her] work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things -- a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer -- and you could also be critically astute and radical and have a minority opinion that was profoundly moral."
"You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you will never completely get over the loss of a beloved person. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly-- that still hurts when the weather is cold-- but you learn to dance with the limp."
"'I liked those ladies! They were helpers, and they danced.' These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced."
"My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone."
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