Elizabeth

“When our mind is carried away by strong pain, it helps to go back to our relaxed and peaceful in-breath and out-breath. Eventually, when our painful feeling comes back, we accept it as it is instead of letting it carry us away and make us more agitated. We don’t fight the painful feeling because we know it is part of us, and we don’t want to fight ourselves. Pain, irritation, and jealousy are all part of us. As they arise, we can calm them by going back to our in-breath and out-breath. Our peaceful breathing will calm those strong emotions. When an emotion becomes calmer, we can see the roots of our suffering and see that those who cause us pain are also suffering. Usually when we suffer we think we’re the only person who suffers, and that the other person is very happy. But in fact, it’s likely that the person who hurts us also has a lot of pain and doesn’t know how to handle his strong emotions. Breathing with awareness, we generate our energy of mindfulness, and we can have insight into”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child

“Emma is the engine of this home, the person who propels it forward, keeps everyone fed and clothed and healthy and happy—and yet she’s entirely alone within it, and getting lonelier with every item ticked off her checklist. This is what it comes down to: the flat-out invisible drudgery of family maintenance, the vanishing of personality as everyone else’s accrues. You never asked for this, did you, Emma? You didn’t know it would be quite like this.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare...”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“It was funny how we thought education to be the great gilded key which would solve all problems, eliminate all poverty and disease, eradicate differences between social classes, and bring the children of okra-planters up to par with the children of emperors.”
― Pat Conroy, The Water is Wide