Star Forbis

“There is an articulation of life one hears again and again. People will say, ‘oh, this is only a season.’ You know what I am referring to, don’t you? I mean how if someone is in difficulty they’ll say ‘it’s only a season.’ Or if someone is having a new baby and in the sleepless nights, an older woman will comfort with this idea that the expanse of time is a season—a winter, I suppose? (rather, a hurricane season!)—and the season will change eventually to something sunnier. I take issue with this. There are, by definition, four seasons that repeat in measured pattern year after year. As there is no such rhythm in the human life, I have to think that when it comes to seasons we all get one round. We are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively, interesting years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle into ourselves in autumn, that cool but not yet cold time, rich and aromatic. And in winter we age (brutally) and die. One turn of the seasons per person, unless it’s cut short, like it was for Gill, and like it was for Quintana Roo. I suppose, on this schedule, we’d say your John had made it to fall. My mother died in her summer.”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“most of what I was taught as gospel standards turned out to be optional values abandoned for power, greed, or lies. The church that raised me bears almost no resemblance to the one dehumanizing refugees, defending white supremacy, and aligning with a morally bankrupt autocrat. To put it succinctly: Organized religion, once my happy place, truly confuses me. I am adrift inside it for the first time in my life.”
― Jen Hatmaker, Awake: A Memoir

“As long as there is breath, there is hope.”
― Sadeqa Johnson, Yellow Wife

“She taught me to think about life not just in terms of how many executioner's blades were poised over our proverbial necks at any given time, but in terms of how we could use our time before that ax fell, or didn't. And a lot of the time it didn't. Keep working, keep moving, keep hoping. (p. 236)”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life