Charli > Recent Status Updates

“…his conflict about learning—his wish to avoid it—was based mostly on years of frustration and on a very legitimate fear of failure based on his brain’s limits. Once he was liberated from his difficulties by [prescribed exercises strengthening formerly blocked brain functions], his innate love of learning emerged full force.” - pg. 41 🧠🌱 (neuropsychology, I 🧡 u)

Great emphasis on defining pivotal yet commonly overlooked or oversimplified terms, such as “Love” and “Spirituality.” Pinning down the shape of genuine love is indispensable for our growth both personally and communally. It’s also important to help distinguish between the feeling of care that often mimics love (i.e. cathecting) as distinct from the nurturing reality of genuine love.

Note to future self: Understanding + Compassion are key ingredients for happiness 🧡🤲🏻

Deep listening is also incredibly powerful and the practice of remaining present 🤝🏻

A page-turner to start off 2026!

I love how much this references biology and history. There are so many cues, symbols, and interwoven themes. It’s deeply romantic in that time-conscious, ever-wondering way that makes me ask again and again, “Why now? What were the chances? What trivial coincidences led to us?” And also, most importantly, “You make me laugh. Now, and of all things: we are us together only.”

“Old fools are babes again, and must be used
With checks, as flatteries, when they are seen abused.”
- pg. 78 👑

“In a way scientific exploration of human consciousness is just an extension of the arts, theater, literature, and even religion… a project that has moved human beings for centuries: to apply the mind to its own understanding.” pg. 13

“What genius, what integrity it must have required in face of all that criticism, in the midst of that purely patriarchal society, to hold fast to the thing as they saw it without shrinking. Only Jane Austin did it and Emily Brontë… They wrote as women write, not as men write.” pg. 75 ✍🏻🤵‍♀️

“Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

“Certainly travelers had returned from the heart and tried to represent what they had seen, but love was in the end like a species of rare colored butterfly, often sighted, but never conclusively identified.” 🦋 pg. 75

“My mistake was to confuse a destiny to love with a destiny to love a given person. It was the error of thinking that Chloe, rather than love, was inevitable.” pg. 11

“They were light brown in the way that a rose is red, or that the sky is blue. They defined what it meant to be light brown.” — pg. 22

“The desire to practice to transform our own suffering and the suffering of the world is called Bodhicitta. Sometimes this word is translated as “the beginner’s mind” or “the mind of love”… you should know that, as long as the beginners mind is still alive and powerful in you, you don’t have to worry. You’ll be happy, and you’ll bring others a lot of happiness too. — pg. 67

“My actions are my continuation.” 🌊

“Culture shapes the expression of traumatic stress.” — pg. 189

“The challenge of recovery is to establish ownership of your body and your mind—of your self… feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed… ashamed, or collapsed.” — pg. 205

“It was as if liberals took a bicycle apart to fix it but never quite figured out how to get it running properly again.” - Paul Sabin

“But I didn’t do those things. Sometimes you grow up in the space of a minute.” - pg. 118

“Somehow that night my girl shame and fear were nowhere in the room. I thought the thought of somebody’s son.” pg. 28

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“Recognize when there are no words for the pain, when there are no words for the joy, there are rocks… Smell kelp and taste salt; feel that underwater animals have brushed near you. Remember parts of your body are scattered in water all over earth. Know land is made from you.” 🌱🪨

“We are early in the story of humanity’s relationship with energy. Today’s technologies will come to see comical, even barbaric.” pg. 67 🌎