Hilary

“He has a theory: When we travel, we actually take three trips. There’s the first trip of preparation and anticipation, packing and daydreaming. There’s the trip you’re actually on. And then, there’s the trip you remember. “The key is to try to keep all three as separate as possible,” he says. “The key is to be present wherever you are right now.” This advice, more than any, stays with me.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“Healing is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you, without pretending it isn’t there or allowing it to hijack your day. It is learning to confront ghosts and to carry what lingers. It is learning to embrace the people I love now instead of protecting against a future in which I am gutted by their loss. Katherine’s experience and her insight sit with me. She went through something she thought she could never survive and yet here she is, surviving. “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

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“As we live longer and longer, the vast majority of us will travel back and forth across these realms, spending much of our lives somewhere in between. These are the terms of our existence. The idea of striving for some beautiful, perfect state of wellness? It mires us in eternal dissatisfaction, a goal forever out of reach. To be well now is to learn to accept whatever body and mind I
currently have.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted