Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

by Anne Lamott

I grew out of the migraines and grew into my hair, but I am still the world’s best big-girl helper, the reliable one, the overly sensitive child, a perfectionist, and so on.

Why give up these identities? Maybe because they gravely limited and falsified my life.

And because they aren’t who I am. But I like the containment, and how they keep me safe, confined...

identity is a posture that we steal and assemble as a protective coating, but it’s also a ski mask, camouflage and protection from the cold.

Jesus’ message is that who your family says you are has nothing to do with the truth of your spiritual identity.

but that we are in fact perfect children of Light, and that he loves us more than life itself, and that nothing we do can get God to stop adoring us, but He or She would not object to more of an effort toward active goodness and mercy, even when we feel misunderstood and cranky.

The terrible weight of family is that you may love them, but you also know them too intimately, their dark sides, their secrets and lies.

but you know what they are in for: the world will let them down, hurt them, and try to squelch their spirits so they will be better employees.

So often our focus is on supporting the identities and structures that were put in place for us by the more powerful damaged people in the family as caricatures of themselves.

But the willingness to change comes when the pain of staying where you are is too great, like Anaïs Nin losing her willingness to stay tight in a bud. After I attacked my uncle, I became