Savannah Wright > Recent Status Updates

iii The Proposal

After about a year I found myself picking this up again. This series is near & dear to my heart but I hit a bit of a slump w/ this one. However, I think it was just meant to find me now.

This vignette touched me deeply sometimes it isn’t until it’s too late in some ways do we understand. We may not be able to change the past but we can sure let it change our future.

// read at silence please

a little bit of Japanese history/relationship to nature paired with beginning to explore the benefits of nature/“nature therapy” — shinrin-yoku is literally translated as forest bathing.

•wow•

awe and “wow” takes so many forms— so much wonder in this world; a prayer to name it.

“By the time you discover that there are millions of other galaxies, you also discover boys, and then, even better, beer, Sylvia Plath, rock and roll. Things begin to look up. You may be able to give this joint a run for its money. This is when Wow means Phew.”

•thanks•

sometimes we pray it more than we know.

This chapter a reminder of the power of the posture of thanks — that gratitude takes grit; in the face of the mystery to choose thank you is not easy but it life changing

•help•

The first section of Anne’s breakdown of 3 prayers. She so beautifully holds the tension of people’s contexts. The cries from the heart across spiritual belief— her being raised non religious. Holding humility & honestly Lamott sits in the uncomfortable space of things being unknown & out of our control and moving through our pleads knowing that.

Love her concept of God box — I might use that.

flying through this — again, wholeness.

Palmer really speaks to the ways culturally we fragment.

I love how in honesty he shares the things that did not work for him but pulls a common thread through.

Always a reminder of authenticity and an intrinsic sense that is frequently condemned.

I feel like I may be on a similar internal journey to a young to middle aged Parker.

Way has closed many a time in my life.

We listen for guidance from everywhere but within. — love the wholeness perspective so far

“like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.”

What a gift to be in my Mary Oliver Renaissance.

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, & I will tell you mine… Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese..”

too many good lines & not enough space on Goodreads

“When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”

“I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world”

A little sprinkle of magical realism.

each story about how three days with a cat can change your life.

Even after the first story- complex humanity bundled in cozy. I did want more from it but excited to read the other stories

“In spring there’s hope, in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing, in winter I am sleepy as any beast in its leafy cave, but in summer there is everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts, the hospitality of the Lord and my inadequate answers as I row my beautiful, temporary body through this water-lily world.”

Attention Is the beginning of devotion

“Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things, but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and thoroughly, solved everything “

“ if we could count the fears, both great and small, that once hounded us, and then thank God for each dread outcome that never materialized, we would reach no end of gratitude”

“ in a sudden and luminous moment, we realize that we are being accosted by mercy and embraced, even before we lay hold of ourselves”

“& regardless of what else you wear put on love”

“If I were today on my deathbed, I would name my love of the color blue and making love with you as two of the sweetest sensations I knew on this earth.”

“I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.”

a thoughtful and deeply feeling ode to blue and everything it represents.

This beautiful world with its dark and bright wonderings and hard interesting questions — a happy heart

“And you have a person in your life whose hand you like to hold?
"Yes, I do."

additional loved bits:
“Your glorious laughter” “the in betweens”
“Love still as you once loved, deeply and without patience”

Mary Oliver magic

This book spoke to so many of my inner conflicts with my profession with humanity and nuance. Trauma, diagnosis, abandonment ETC.

again - borderline is so misunderstood and this book addressed the importance of some of these topics while holding space for a future beyond the way we categorize & pathologize people.

Truly well done & thought provoking w/ excellent amounts of history intertwined w/ lived experiences.

“Not anyone who says, "I'm going to be
careful and smart in matters of love,"
who says, "I'm going to choose slowly,"
but only those lovers who didn't choose at all
but were, as it were, chosen
by something invisible
and powerful and uncontrollable
and beautiful and possibly even
unsuitable—
only those know what I'm talking about
in this talking about love.”

there’s many a reason why M.O. is so beloved.

it’s wild how new some of these things are and how unknown so much is.

borderline is SO misunderstood!!!!

the dsm lowkey SUCKSSSSSS - the pathologizing misunderstood nature of these categorizations.

not trauma informed and doesn’t like brain differences into account.

“ sometimes we weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but because we want to feel witnessed in our despair”

“the romance of seeking”

“‘I’m in love with you both in completely different ways’ you said”

“Eventually you will have to give up this love… it has a morbid heart”

Ever thought provoking and relevant in the social and political climate.

May we read on and seek truth not conformity for conformity sake

Freud and frenczi lowkey wreaked havoc on the lives women for the sake of their processes

Yikes

Women’s emotions weaponized + sexism

hard to reconcile the path paving with the terrible

History intertwined with human experience.

enjoying moving through this book

“ even if we still nurse a secret nostalgia for the far country, Abba falls on our neck and kisses us.”

Just as we are

“That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it.”

this has been on my list since 2021 - finally decided to read it and it’s beautiful I’m loving it and it’s like a dagger.

“How can it be? Was I too blue for you”

“When I met you, a blue rush began”

“Things take the time they take. Don’t worry. How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?”

The first poem from the book and poignant. Thoroughly enjoying this collection so far.

BPD is so significantly misunderstood + I hate the stigma surrounding it. I have complex feelings about the diagnostic criteria (and diagnosis in general) and how it’s categorized - I’ve been having lots on conversations about bpd and the overlap of symptoms with complex trauma and the autistic experience as well. Enjoying looking at a bit of a historical perspective with it.

BREEEEZING THROUGH

hitting a little too close to home

“Well, I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.”

“‘Will my mouth always be like this?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘It will. It is because the nerve was cut.’ She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. ‘I like it,’ he says, ‘It is kind of cute’

All at once I know who he is…Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth & I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”