J

“You are a human being, and your birthright is to remain fully human. So you get to be everything: loud quiet bold smart careful impulsive creative joyful big angry curious ravenous ambitious. You are allowed to take up space on this earth with your feelings, your ideas, your body. You do not need to shrink. You do not need to hide any part of yourself, ever.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living

“You might think sitting with someone who is dying means you will be having big conversations about the meaning of life,” a hospice chaplain had advised me. “Wrong! Sometimes, all that’s called for is to just show up and watch Jeopardy! together.”
― Barbara Becker, Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind

“This seems like one of the hardest things about being sick in the way you’re sick: being sick makes you stressed. But being stressed makes you sicker.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

“The French author Jules Renard once wrote: If I had my life to live over again, I would ask that not a thing be changed, but that my eyes be opened wider. Wider, I would add, to every reality—not just to the happiness but to every heartache too.”
― Barbara Becker, Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind