‘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
“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
“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
“True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.”
― 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
“Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don’t belong. You will always find it because you’ve made that your mission. Stop scouring people’s faces for evidence that you’re not enough. You will always find it because you’ve made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don’t negotiate their value with the world. The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own. No one belongs here more than you.”
― 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
Abby’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Abby’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Abby
Lists liked by Abby





























