Shannon

“Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn’t mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.” Professor Neimeyer’s”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Science is not the truth. Science is finding the truth. When science changes its opinion, it didn’t lie to you. It learned more.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Worrying and anxiety go together, but worry is not an emotion; it’s the thinking part of anxiety. Worry is described as a chain of negative thoughts about bad things that might happen in the future.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“But at the beginning, empty allowed me to take everything in. At the start, empty meant receptivity and only later meant rejection. Empty—for years I still loved it. I found hollowness extremely satisfying. Like a straw, something you could blow through. That was some of the most relief I could get in life, was being empty. That was a way I knew I could be open to sensation, when I was diminished, slim. And when I was: It was a gliding feeling. I could do a bridge; I could do a backbend. I could straddle you. I could leave for the airport and just get on a flight. There was no problem with anything. There was no reason not to get dressed. I recognize that I am still attached to the word; my impulse is to defend it. Emptiness is possibility. Empty is the moment before the future gets filled in. But it’s a state of impoverishment, not sustenance, and my unwillingness to accept this has been my great mistake. Empty amounts to nothing.”
― Susan Burton, Empty