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To the strong girls, To the hustlers, To the superwomen, Tend your hearts with ruthless care…and rest.
I would never be fixed. I’d never feel happy again. I’d be a burden and an embarrassment to my family and my friends.
And I think I’m most grateful for time, which doesn’t always heal all wounds, but teaches us how to be happy again even with our scars.”
I know what she was going through, but understanding how you got hurt never makes it hurt less.
They share an easy intimacy that’s as tried and warm as a blanket you’ve had for years and still treasure.
was no walk in the park, Merry.” “Who wants to walk in the park? I think that man would run wild with you.”
“She has this thing where she encourages me to be my own gentle observer.” “What does that mean?” “It means seeing myself clearly—good, bad, beautiful, ugly, faults, mistakes—acknowledging what I really think and feel, and not judging those emotions. Understanding myself. Not censoring it. Having compassion for myself.”
“I heard someone say once that when you try to fix people’s hurt, you’re controlling it instead of sitting with them and connecting. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I have language for it now.” “And what is that language?” “This is not me saying you were wrong and it was all your fault. It’s me understanding how completely incompatible we were in our grief.”
I wish we’d talked sooner. Wish we’d gone to therapy. Wish I’d found the right therapist, the right meds, the right everything in time. It would have made a world of difference. Maybe it would have saved us, but none of those things happened and this is all that’s left.
“If any of you are in that place tonight, I encourage you not to give up. To give yourself time to heal, to grow, to find joy again. What a difference a year can make, and in just a few minutes, we get a brand-new one. As long as you have a new year, you have another chance.”
“Depression,” she goes on, “is a liar. If it will tell you no one loves you, that you’re not good enough, that you’re a burden or, in the most extreme cases, better off dead, then it can certainly convince you that you’re better off without the man you love, and that, ultimately, he’s better off without you.”
“While believing the lies depression tells us,” she continues, “sometimes we make decisions and do things we wouldn’t otherwise. Part of the process of healing from depressive episodes can be dealing with the fallout of things we did and decided in that altered state of mind.”
Divorce may or may not be. Broken relationships may or may not be. You may never repair those completely, but you’re still here to try. Do you recognize what an amazing gift that is? To still be here to try?”
She’s not someone you banished with therapy and meds. She is you. You cannot dissociate from her. Until you reconcile that, you won’t find true peace. Until you have compassion for her instead of judgment, you cannot fully heal.”
The futility of it angers me because while I’m sitting here unable to breathe, punishing myself every day, my life is waiting for me.
I must embrace the necessity of finding joy in the borders of my own soul, sketching the parameters of contentment along the lines of my heart and myself.
So when will I forgive myself and be about the business of making the life I deserve, even when I don’t feel I do deserve that life?
“This body gave me my children,” I tell her, sliding down to lift her knees over my shoulders. “And it will always be beautiful to me.”
pain. Moments like these feel so good they do hurt. Hurts that it’s this perfect and that it has to end; that it’s fleeting, yet indelible.
Our traumas, the things that injure us in this life, even over time, are not always behind us. Sometimes they linger in the smell of a newborn baby. They surprise us in the taste of a home-cooked meal. They wait in the room at the end of the hall. They are with us. They are present. And there are some days when memories feel more real than those who remain, than the joys of this world.
“Live long enough,” Dr. Musa says softly, “and you’ll lose people, things. We just need to learn how to deal with it in ways that aren’t isolating or destructive.
I’ve fallen in love with the warrior woman who walked through fire, the one who came through stronger, reshaped by sorrow, reformed by grief, reborn in joy.
