Gwen

“That’s the thing I’ve never really understood about emotions. We’re given unhelpful words for them—sad, happy, angry, scared, disgusted—but they’re not accurate and there never seems to be anywhere near enough of them. How could there be? Emotions aren’t binary or finite: they change, shift, run into each other like colored water. They are layered, three-dimensional and twisted; they don’t arrive in order, one by one, labeled neatly. They lie on top of each other, twisting like kaleidoscopes, like prisms, like spinning bird feathers lit with their own iridescence.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“The problem with this is that if we beat ourselves up after a mistake, we add shame onto the guilt and frustration that we already feel about our mistake. That guilt and frustration can be helpful in moving us forward, but shame...shame keeps us stuck. It's a paralyzing emotion. When we get caught in a shame spiral, we tend to make more of the same kinds of mistakes that caused us shame in the first place".”
― Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died

“The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

“Grief dares us to love once more.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place