snowdrops

“Love and loss are inextricably linked, humbling and transforming, though we would rather have our loved one back. And no matter how much we resist rejoining life, the unseen teachers move through us, rearranging the chasm we are trying to climb out of as we feel ourselves being pulled between the plethora of life and the godforsaken emptiness. Out of unbearable grief, the heart like a phoenix mysteriously emerges in time from its own ash, one heart-giving at a time.”
― Mark Nepo, Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity

“There may not be as much humanity in the world as one would like to see. But there is some. There's more than one would think. In any case, if you break faith with what you know, that's a betrayal of many, many, many, many people. I may know six people, but that's enough. Love has never been a popular movement and no one's ever wanted really to be free. The world is held togther, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of very few people. Otherwise, of course you're in despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that person, you could be that cop. And you have to decide in yourself not to be.”
― James Baldwin

“And though we have crashed, the harsh beauty of waves is that they always reform, gathering all they’ve been through to rise and crest again. Likewise, we can learn from what we’ve been through. We can expand again and open our minds and hearts. We can find our way back to kindness, if we dare to see each other in ourselves and accept the truth of what we’ve broken. Then, we can see what needs repair.”
― Mark Nepo, Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity

“One inescapable and humbling challenge of loss is that grief requires us to make new maps. For when we lose something dear—a person or a way of life—the geography as we have known it has changed. And so, our old maps, no matter how dear, are no longer accurate, no longer of use. We have to make new maps for how to move forward. In its paradoxical way, grief forces us back into the world where we have to keep learning.”
― Mark Nepo, Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity