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Sammi
https://www.goodreads.com/sammiwa
How wonderful it must be, to have been loved so deeply that your loss could cause utter torment, that your death would be capable of ripping someone apart with grief. Would anyone care if I died?
“Instead of avoiding processing by leaping into the next project, Sam got ambitious about, well, peace... She mourned the all-hands-on-deck, everyone's emergency contact, always hustling version of herself, that she knew was not coming back. "So I mourned for a couple days - I mourned my youth, I mourned my innocence, I mourned everything"...
That change in identity; changing as circumstances change, rather than clinging to a fixed goal that no longer feels true, can feel like racing a ghost of yourself. My ghost self, my former self, was faster, sharper, and willing to do anything. She said yes to everything and pleased everyone. She's who I see in the mirror sometimes when I say 'no I can't' or, 'no I won't.' Or when I wonder what happened to the girl who would prove herself a million times over to an audience of no one. And smile while she was doing it.”
― All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive
That change in identity; changing as circumstances change, rather than clinging to a fixed goal that no longer feels true, can feel like racing a ghost of yourself. My ghost self, my former self, was faster, sharper, and willing to do anything. She said yes to everything and pleased everyone. She's who I see in the mirror sometimes when I say 'no I can't' or, 'no I won't.' Or when I wonder what happened to the girl who would prove herself a million times over to an audience of no one. And smile while she was doing it.”
― All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive
“She would never be able to make this plain, undeviating man understand that the most fragile inner parts of a woman were compiled from a million subtle looks and careless statements from others; this was identity.”
― White Ivy
― White Ivy
“Weylyn's expression shifted gears. I could tell, even before he spoke, that he had drained his mind of his own sadness, and replaced it with empathy for mine.”
― Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance
― Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance
“When I look at myself, it's a lot of 'where is your own ambition coming from?'. And the answer is, self-loathing, and trying to earn a self that I could tolerate. Writing it down now, it feels a bit like I stumbled out of the confessional and into a crowded room. Handing over a secret everyone would have been more comfortable I keep to myself. But that was perhaps the worst slow burn realization. That self loathing could actually be productive. I internalized the belief that the more anxious I was, the faster I'd work. The worse I felt about myself, the harder I'd strive to make my work good. I strove, really, as a means of separating from myself. The worst of it is, is I couldn't exactly define what I loathed.”
― All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive
― All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive
“Something I find incredibly boring [..] is everyone's conviction that love is different for them. Somehow harder. Do you know what I mean? I just don't think it's hard. It's just another way of thinking you're special, the way everyone does when they're a teenager. You think you aren't able to love, except that of course you are. You think you aren't able to love correctly or the same as everyone else, except that of course you are, you just haven't had a chance to do it yet.
You are not special, you're just waiting.”
― Our Wives Under the Sea
You are not special, you're just waiting.”
― Our Wives Under the Sea
Sammi’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Sammi’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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