Where Butterflies Wander
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Read between March 3 - March 5, 2025
4%
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I leave you little except my knowledge of healing and my love. Hopefully that is enough.
5%
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“Television rots the mind and turns a brain to cheese until a person cannot think but only see.” “Your grandfather said that?” “He borrowed the sentiment from Roald Dahl, but yeah, it’s what he used to say.” I smile at the memory. “And if we ever had cheese for lunch or a snack, he’d point to it and say ‘Television’ to drive home the point.”
6%
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It seems a basic tenet of parenthood that you should be able to take away your child’s pain. But no matter how many doctors I’ve taken her to, nothing has worked.
7%
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I’ve learned if you wish hard enough, sometimes your wishes turn real.
7%
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My migraine is really heating up, my left eye throbbing like a heart behind the lid and my insides roiling. I hate how suddenly they strike.
11%
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there it was, the worst lie I ever told, out in the universe, where it has remained, making me nauseous and relieved each time I realize I’ve gotten away with it.
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Nearby, Laverne and Shirley preen,
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Think on a problem long enough, and you might not find the answer, but at least you’ll know the question.
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Though I’ve never been in love, since I was four, I’ve been head over heels in love with the idea of it. I’ve read all the classic
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romances, from Wuthering Heights to Gone with the Wind, and am embarrassingly addicted
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It seems to me, wherever we go, the dents and scratches are going to go with us and that it’s going to take more
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than a new house in a new town in order to set things right.
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Larger than life, he always seemed immortal. But now I know no one is.
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It is always better in the morning.
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“Now’s what we’ve got, and none of us knows about tomorrow.”
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I can tell a lot about a person by how they react to my scars. Some can’t take the sight, either from too much empathy or too little. The former wince or tear up, and the latter sneer or shy away as if the wounds might be contagious. Then there are those who work too hard to pretend they’re unaffected, as if not reacting proves what a good person they are. They laugh too loud at everything I say and constantly compliment me on things like my hair or eyes.
23%
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like Hannah, people who notice but then, within a few minutes, move past it. Their eyes connect easily, and it’s as if they’ve filled in the blanks and no longer see the wounded parts, just me.
26%
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“Last year, for my mom’s birthday, we made green eggs and ham because it’s our mom’s favorite Dr. Seuss book.”
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“Yes and no. No one loved is ever truly gone. And if we keep them in our heart”—she touches her fist to her chest—“we are able to keep them with us. My way of doing that is to collect things I know my second mom would like.”
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And now, here I am, years later, with a life full of purpose, beauty, and love.
33%
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Normally, I’d say yes, but despite the Oscar-worthy performance I’m giving, I’m not in the right frame of mind for company.
35%
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He smiles impossibly wider, seemingly a fan of the odd and unusual.
40%
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Loss. It comes in different forms—financial, physical, emotional. I’ve experienced them all.
41%
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She’s like a new age Renaissance mountain woman, and it’s impossible not to be impressed.
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Life as a human can feel so heavy.
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“It’s because when you do it, it’s like time stands still. You stop thinking, and you’re just there, in the moment, going and going and going, like nothing else exists but your breath and your body and the desire to keep moving.”
Samantha Herold
This is exactly why i run
49%
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Lucky? Unlucky? Hard to say. At the time, I thought the latter. It took years before I could appreciate the blessings of each new day.
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He was handsome and brilliant, and I mistook infatuation for love.
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“The opposite. It’s like I wished for something too hard, and this was what happened because of it.”
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“There’s nothing you can do about what’s done, so you might as well spend your energy on what’s still possible.”
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Until you get married and have kids, you don’t realize how far you will go to protect another.
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Edward Lorenz’s butterfly effect. Lorenz’s theory was that a small change is capable of causing very large consequences. A speck of dirt in an assembly line in China causes a pinprick hole in the seam of an arm floatie. A little girl drowns in a pool in Connecticut. A family is destroyed. A New Hampshire woman’s world is decimated. All for a speck of dirt on the other side of the world.
62%
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I only meant to burn the cabin enough so she wouldn’t come back. I had no idea it would go up the way it did, explosive as a torch.
Samantha Herold
WHAT?! First hes to balme for bee and now this?!
62%
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I throw a pine cone in the river and watch as the current carries it away, and I think how I’d like to drift away with it.
63%
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With her headaches gone and Rock in her life, she’s a caterpillar turned into a butterfly, flittering around, glowing and beautiful.
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But each night when I go to sleep, it’s those small touches that I drift away to with a smile.
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Crying doesn’t solve anything, and neither does self-pity.
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bit like curdled milk, so the choice is, you either decide to make cheese or else let the whole thing go to rot.”
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HAPPY ARE THE PAINTERS, FOR THEY SHALL NOT BE LONELY. LIGHT AND COLOUR, PEACE AND HOPE, WILL KEEP THEM COMPANY TO THE END, OR ALMOST TO THE END, OF THE DAY.
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A stunning little moment, a pearl in a broken necklace, beautiful in itself.
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Rose is mine. From the moment I felt the first tickle in my womb to the moment I take my last breath, she is rooted in my soul.
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Faces change, but eyes remain the window to the soul. Her eyes, my first mother’s eyes, the eyes I see when I look in the mirror, look back. Twenty-three years gone,
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yet it feels like less than a breath. She is here. In front of me. My Rose.