Julissa Rolon

“There is a loneliness to illness, a child's desire to be pitied and seen. But it is precisely this recognition that is elusive. How can you explain and identify your condition if not one has any grasp of what it is you suffer from and the symptoms wax and wane? How do you describe a disease that's not always there?”
― Meghan O'Rourke, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

“Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord. John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings”
― Adreanna Limbach, Tea and Cake with Demons: A Buddhist Guide to Feeling Worthy

“The Buddha said that suffering is like being shot by two arrows. The first arrow is the physical pain—it’s the metal piercing the skin, the force colliding into the body. The second arrow is the mental pain, the meaning and emotion we attach to the being struck, the narratives that we spin in our minds about whether we deserved or didn’t deserve what happened. In many cases, our mental pain is far worse than any physical pain. In most cases, it lasts far longer.”
― Mark Manson, Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope

“The human feeling experience, much like the weather, is often unpredictably changeable.
No “positive” feeling can be induced to persist as a permanent experience, no matter what
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy tells us. As disappointing as this may be, as much as we might
like to deny it, as much as it causes each of us ongoing life frustration, and as much as we were
raised and continue to be reinforced for trying to control and pick our feelings, they are still by
definition of the human condition, largely outside the province of our wills.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving