Jennifer Ide

“The most precious thing I have to tell you about is the sadness. You don’t have to talk about pain, but you have to live out of your pain. Speak out of your depths. Speak out of who you truly are. And when somebody says, “How are you?” don’t say, “I’m fine.” Maybe just say, “Well, I’m not so good. How are you?” Then let the conversation move. Talk not about it, but talk out of it. And, I mean, literally talk in this place.”
― Frederick Buechner, A Crazy, Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory

“The primary, unspoken objective of our storytelling, however, is to provide an appropriate interpretation of our own life. The goal is not just to discover a world or provide an interpretation of the world that allows us to live in it but rather to discover and interpret a world that allows us to live with ourselves. We retell incidents, relate occurrences, and spin tales in order to learn what occurred, especially to me. Such an interpretive process makes the world more hospitable. By telling what had happened to them, for example, the Rwandan women were able to fashion a world that included their experience.”
― Herbert Anderson, Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals: Weaving Together the Human and the Divine