Stephanie > Recent Status Updates

I’m in love with this book in the series. I’m approaching the climax! My favorite stage when reading. My anxiety is high, my heart is pounding, my mind and emotions are racing! And I can’t stop reading until I finish it.

Chapter 20! I can’t put it down! I’m determined to finish it today, but I’m taking a retail therapy and food break.

Chapter 5 ! The goal is to read five more chapters before calling it a night. Tomorrow is Sunday, laundry is done, & house clean. The plan is to read in various reading spots throughout the day, hit up a coffee shop or bookstore! Hubby goes back to work tomorrow so I need to mentally prepare for my return on Monday.

“Love changes us. It straightens us, and dents us, and lifts us, and guides us. If we sleep, if we suffer the side effect, if we’re no longer shaped by the people we love, who are we?”

“The love itself endures. The love itself is baked into our memories. The love itself is what slips across our cheeks when we cry, it’s what tugs at our lips when we smile. It’s the yearning pit in our stomach, the urge to make them proud. It’s the gratitude in knowing we were gifted something real.”

“There is only one reason anyone would sleep at the Poppy fields. Love. Love makes people do wild things, things they can’t understand, things they may have sworn they would never do. So, if they ever lost their loved one, I imagine they might do just about anything. But here’s the thing; they haven’t lost love, they’ve lost the physical, visible, tangible layer of love, but not love itself.”

“Some days are gonna hurt more than others. You did good, just getting yourself this far. But you’ve still got a road ahead of you, and it’s long and windy as hell, with switchbacks and curves that’ll make it feel like you don’t know if you’re coming or going. So, you just drive it as fast or as slow as you need, Don’t give a damn what other folks think. Just don’t stop driving, OK?”

“I remember my mother saying once that death anoints all sinners as saints. You read any eulogy or obituary, and you’d think that anyone who ever died was perfect. When someone’s gone, it’s easy to forget all the flaws, all the fights. But that flattens them. It makes them boring.”

“Donna looked down at her husband‘s words, forever inked in his slanted handwriting. She remembered, kissing her husband. “Make it a double,” he would always say. And then she would kiss him again.” 🥹

“There was so much of Donna that hadn’t changed in the past 19 months, she was still a mother, a sister, a grandmother, a friend, a businesswoman, a neighbor, a crafter of killer cocktails, I lover of music and painting. But she was something else now, too. A survivor.”

“ losing someone it’s not like a sickness or a temporary rough patch you’re just trying to deal with. Even if you sleep for two months and wake up and feel less awful, the Work isn’t done. This doesn’t end. This is the rest of your life. There’s no getting over, they’re just getting on. Figuring out who you are now, because you sure as hell aren’t the same person as before.”

“ You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” Winnie the Pooh!

“I don’t think the sleep sent the thumbtack to me.I think it was Allen talking to me and he was probably always talking to me, from the moment that he died, but I just couldn’t hear it until after I’d slept. I’d been so focused on mourning the end of our conversation that I didn’t realize it could actually keep going.That of course, it would never be the same as before, but I could still hear him again”

Chapter 40! I’m excited I’m about to approach the climax, but I’m also preparing myself for the aftermath.

“It’s the journey, not the destination.”

“In life, there would always be loss, and the desire to sleep through the pain.” “It was later and that same phone call that Mae had told Ellis she hoped, someday, to go in her sleep. The most peaceful ending she could think of. Two years later, she got what she wished for.”

It’s her Sister!?!?!

“Ray should have said that courage was not just running towards a crisis, but also recognizing when you’ve seen one Crisis too many.”

The thing about grief is that It’s never just grief. For Sasha, grief was also fear. Fear that she might never love again, fear of her unknown future. For Ray, grief was also anger. Anger at the way he lost his Brother, at the place he blamed for taking him. And, for both, grief was also guilt.

He preferred to run. He preferred to feed his body’s craving for motion, purpose, challenge.