Aspen Matis > Quotes

“The trees were friendly, they gave me rest and shadowed refuge. Slipping through them, I felt safe and competent. My whole body was occupied. I had little energy to think or worry.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“She told me that my rape was not my fault, that I should feel no shame, that – simple as it may sound – I hadn’t caused it. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. It was true. And it had not been obvious to me. And hearing it from someone else, a professional, someone who should know, helped me believe that soon I would believe it.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“The only comfort I found was in planning to disappear.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I was no longer following a trail.

I was learning to follow myself.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Walking in solitude fixes nothing, but it leads you to the place where you can identify the malady—see the wound's true form and nature—and then discern the proper medicine.

My malady was submission.

The symptom: my compliance.

The antidote was loud clear boundaries.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Nights alone in my yellow kitchen, I made myself hot chocolate. I missed my mother. In my window, maple leaves rusted, young fall blooming.”
― Aspen Matis

“Water was liquid silver, water was gold. It was clarity—a sacred thing. Drinking was no longer something to take for granted. I’d never needed to consider water before.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I didn’t know if I was brave or reckless.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“That evening after dinner, I picked lemons from the tree in the backyard, the fruits golden bulbs under the rising moon.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“Childhood is a wilderness.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I needed to stop hiding: I was raped. It was time to honestly be exactly who I was. I saw—the shame wasn't mine, it was his, and I could stop misrepresenting myself, and I could accept myself.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Smiling at an echo of his voice on my mind’s stage, I felt the void of all I hadn’t said.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“I was so much more powerful than anyone knew. I was an animal learning to fight back, instinctively, fiercely. I was a brave girl. I was a fit fox.

I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“On this walk I'd had so much time and space to actually figure out who I was without my mother's influence. I understood now: the things that my mother had found made her happy were not the same as the things that made me happy. And I understood: that was okay.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I was safe in this world. This was a place for creatures—I felt I had become more of a creature than a girl. I could handle myself in the wild.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“We were in the woods, and not a parent or a friend on earth knew where. At this moment, we were untraceable, this notion an odd pleasure. A patch of fallen leaves glowed in a pool of golden sun, and the dim forest air smelled sweet, of young lilac, invisible sage.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“In the aftermath of destruction, a silence settles – the stillness of fresh loss. People’s cheerful chatter is fainter, the blue color of sky dimmer; now that horror is undeniable and feels inescapable, the value of life seems lessened.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“The block of sky in our twin high windows became a nectarine, amber and rose pink, and we lay in silence as white sunlight broke.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“The bravest thing I ever did was leave there. The next bravest thing I did was come back, to make myself heard.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“If I could mark clearly, convincingly and consistently what was good for me and also what was bad — if I could say yes and also no, as if it were the law — it would become my law.

It finally had to.

I understood that it wouldn’t be easy, it would be very hard; I’d need to resist the habit I had developed long ago – with conviction. I’d have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threats like a Taser gun. I’d stun them. They’d bow to me. I’d let my no echo against the mountains.

And better to feel bad for a moment saying no – and stop it – than to get harmed.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I was beginning to feel compassion for myself.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“We spent June and July in the Rockies, growing stronger, feeling feral in the untamed range of mountains.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“Bright yellow lemons twinkled in the twilight sun on a terrace tree, and far beyond my window, San Francisco lay, flat like a pastel toy.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“A red leaf danced from a branch like a dropping flame, down into the calm blue lake. A gust had broken it free. There was a cold bite in the wind.
It was now deep autumn in the mountains.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“He stared at me. “Every person exists in their own shallow bowl, and they can’t see over the rim,” he explained. “But they think that their world is the world—the truth. When in reality, no two bowls are identical, and all people are stuck trapped in their own.”

Listening to my love, I felt as if we were transported back to the trail, staring at the inky field of ghostly stars. My hair dangling off our bed and onto the hardwood floor, almost upside down, I challenged him, intoxicated. “No that’s silly. We see the color of the walls, the same.”

“There is no way to prove that your blue is my blue,” he said.

And sobering, I began seeing how my love’s allegory was a hard truth, very dark—how our shallow bowls, differences of perspective, account for all declarations of others’ “wrongness” (one’s own rightness), and the sense of being wronged.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“She had wanted me to hold rape inside me like a dark pearl, keep it in there, as it grew, as I grew cramped, as it overtook me as hidden things do. Secrets become lies. I'd carried in every step I took this lie, the shame of it.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“The true answer held my chest like an unwanted hand’s sudden touch, uncomfortable and unfeeling.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“Trails enabled me to better see the world, to notice fine aspects invisible from an airplane, the most basic things we miss. Seeing life at a pace at which you can actually observe nuance, the speed of stepping, the beautiful inspiring texture of “plain” reality becomes visible—God smiling in the detail.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“When tomorrow broke, our hillside home filled up with honeyed light, a fish tank.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir