Stacey ˗ ღ ˎˊ˗ > Recent Status Updates

I am at Houlihans and I had an excellent adult beverage which has altered my consciousness and I still have two ARCs to read for Tuesday and help 😆

“Libraries were full of ideas – perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.“

Already crying. Awesome.

She’s staring at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. In a way she is; being sage is a part of me, and I imagine the glowing makes it visibly real in a way it previously wasn’t to her.
And I find that it matters to me that this one person sees me as more than a divine vessel.
It’s greedy.
I’ve already been chosen by a god.
But I want to be chosen by her.

“Well,” Tasa finally says, “I am for sure not an expert in living a worthwhile life, but I do know it’s better to do something than nothing. And if you’re already moving, it’s easier to keep moving. So you might as well start with something small, where it’ll be easier, and see where that takes you.”

“On the heels of that thought, another, more dangerous follows: Why should she have to perform labor to deserve to have enough food?”

Indeed. Dangerous thoughts.

“That is what I am afraid of. That having finally realized I alone can make a difference, I will make exactly the wrong kind. That I will drown a seed rather than nurture it. That maybe I have the worst kind of significance: the kind that supports the wrong side. “

“The president was laser-focused on funding treatment because of the fear of heroin-addicted soldiers returning from Vietnam and the need to at least appear to reduce crime to get reelected. When both were favorably resolved, he escalated the drug war and got rid of Jaffe.”

“The words used to describe a serious health problem, addiction, were steeped in the language of war and violence. There were foes to be defeated. Nixon promoted a ‘law and order’ agenda, and enforcement disproportionately targeted communities of color. The focus on dismantling structural inequalities ended, and a backlash against interventions to end poverty and inequality began.”

“The clinic system is a creation of the War on Drugs, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) designed it, and at the same time it is a refuge from it. People who take methadone swap the dangers of illicit drug use—arrest, incarceration, violence, overdose, and death—for a safe supply of the medication in a setting that punishes, monitors, and controls them.”

This book is confirming my atheism 😆

“I am no longer afraid.
I will never again allow myself
to be afraid to be loved. Or to love you.

Who am I to doubt the World's reasoning?
And how remarkable it feels—finally-
to be that broken filly

upon whom no one would ever bet, yet
one day-against all odds-breaks
into the outside lane and comes in first.”

“Rewriting your stories isn’t done by erasing the past but by owning your role in it. Accountability begins with curiosity—moving away from ‘This is what happened to me,’ which is where most people land and loiter, to ‘What have I been telling myself, and why?’

You don’t need to be perfect to grow. You just need to question the story that says you do.”

“In the the United States, we’re living through a loneliness epidemic, yet people often try to fix loneliness with the same tools that created it—with more self-optimization, more curated connections, more autonomy. My goal is not to help you be better at doing life alone but to remind you that you were never meant to do life alone in the first place.”