Heather

“The most profound message of racial segregation may be that the absence of people of color from our lives is no real loss. Not one person who loved me, guided me, or taught me ever conveyed that segregation deprived me of anything of value. I could live my entire life without a friend or loved one of color and not see that as a diminishment of my life. In fact, my life trajectory would almost certainly ensure that I had few, if any, people of color in my life. I might meet a few people of color if I played certain sports in school, or if there happened to be one or two persons of color in my class, but when I was outside of that context, I had no proximity to people of color, much less any authentic relationships. Most whites who recall having a friend of color in childhood rarely keep these friendships into adulthood. Yet if my parents had thought it was valuable to have cross-racial relationships, they would have ensured that I had them, even if it took effort—the same effort so many white parents expend to send their children across town so they can attend a better (whiter) school. Pause for a moment and consider the profundity of this message: we are taught that we lose nothing of value through racial segregation. Consider the message we send to our children—as well as to children of color—when we describe white segregation as good.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“The glow flares bright—bright as the billion-year-old light around us. Bright as a sun.

Almost every particle in the universe was once part of a star.

First, hydrogen condensing and collapsing, bringing radiance to the void.

Furnaces burning bright, then fading, giving all they had left back into the cosmos.

Carbon and oxygen. Iron and gold.

Vast clouds swirling with their own gravity. Coalescing and disintegrating.

Generation to generation.

The remnants of stellar alchemy, stirring into life, then consciousness.

Crawling from the oceans. Taking to the skies.

And from there, back to the stars that birthed them.

A perfect circle.”
― Amie Kaufman, Illuminae

“The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is well known that most people don’t listen. They use the time when someone else is speaking to think of what they’re going to say next. True Listeners have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find, or at least hard to find twice.”
― Terry Pratchett, Pyramids

“Do you know why we have the sunflowers? It’s not because Vincent van Gogh suffered. It’s because Vincent van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through all the pain, he had a tether, a connection to the world. And that is the focus of the story we need – connection.”
― Hannah Gadsby