Donna Pelletier

“I pray for courage

I pray for courage
Now I’m old
To greet the sickness
And the cold

I pray for courage
In the night
To bear the burden
Make it light

I pray for courage
In the time
When suffering comes and
Starts to climb

I pray for courage
At the end
To see death coming
As a friend”
― Leonard Cohen, The Flame

“Pain cracks us open. It breaks us. But in the breaking, there is a new kind of wholeness that emerges.”
― Steve Leder, More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us

“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows”
― Leonard Cohen

“As we grow older and wiser we understand more about how much there really is we can’t know for sure.”
― Douglas Carl Fricke, Genealogy of the Mangold Family from Bavaria to Cincinnati, 1800 to 1930's