Rachel

“But for a very long time, even after my life had moved on and even soared, even after I had a home of my own, a family of my own, in so many ways the vibrant life I’d dreamed of as a child, even then I couldn’t speak of my mother without tears. I couldn’t even say a simple thing like “my mother grew up in Brooklyn” without crying. For this reason, I learned not to speak of her at all. The tears felt unacceptable; it made no sense to grieve a mother who was still alive, even a mother as difficult as mine. But I couldn’t accept the chasm between the mother I remembered, who’d been my greatest companion, champion, and love, and the one I had now. Yet that childhood mother—if she’d ever existed in the first place—had walked away with the diaries I handed her on the final day of freshman year, and it was, for all intents and purposes, the last I ever saw of her.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“But it was only while lolling around the basement or backyard that you’d settle into the anesthetizing effects of boredom, and with that monotony, your brain would kick into action, attempting to compensate. You might notice the world around you, both the minute and the grand, at its natural pace, letting go of the need to relentlessly move on to the next new thing.”
― Pamela Paul, 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet

“Watercolors and words were the drugs we preferred for our pain. We were learning that sometimes the only way to endure suffering is to transform it into art.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“You have to shift from the gloom and doom and focus instead on what you love,” she told me before bed. “That’s all you can do in the face of these things. Love the people around you. Love the life you have. I can’t think of a more powerful response to life’s sorrows than loving.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted