‘Oh, there’s always something going on down there. It’s a never-ending chit-chat between Israel and Hizballah across the border. Like boys taunting each other. Except it’s people’s lives they’re playing with.’
“But what we know now is that when we deny our emotion, it owns us. When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain.”
― Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone
― Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone
“True belonging is not passive. It's not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It's not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it's safer. It's a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. We want true belonging, but it takes tremendous courage to knowingly walk into hard moments.”
― Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone
― Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone
“He knew, even back then, that she was prone to bouts of melancholy. It came to her in successive waves, an ebb and flow. When the first wave arrived, barely touching her toes, it was so light and translucent a ripple that you might be forgiven for thinking it insignificant, that it would vanish soon, leaving no trace. But then followed another wave, and the next one, rising as far as her ankles, and the one after that covering her knees, and before you knew it she was immersed in liquid pain, up to her neck, drowning. That's how depression sucked her in.”
― The Island of Missing Trees
― The Island of Missing Trees
“Love is the bold affirmation of hope. You don't embrace hope when death and destruction are in command. You don't put on your best dress and tuck a flower in your hair when you are surrounded by ruins and shards. You don't lose your heart at a time when hearts are supposed to remain sealed, especially for those who are not of your religion, not of your language, not of your blood. You don't fall in love in Cyprus in the summer of 1974. Not here, not now. And yet there they were, the two of them.”
― The Island of Missing Trees
― The Island of Missing Trees
“If families resemble trees, as they say, arborescent structures with entangled roots and individual branches jutting out at awkward angles, family traumas are like thick, translucent resin dripping from a cut in the bark. They trickle down generations.”
― The Island of Missing Trees
― The Island of Missing Trees
Abby’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Abby’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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