Hello Stranger
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See? Nothing. “You’ve shrunk your blood vessels.” I peered at my arm like I might be able to help her find one. “You need to relax,” she told me. “I agree,” I said, trying to slow my breathing down from hummingbird rate. She added a second tourniquet. “When we get scared, our bodies pull all our blood into our core to protect the vital organs.” Relax, I commanded myself. Relax.
Katherine Center
This happens to me all the time! I'm terrible at getting blood drawn. I get so nervous, and then being nervous makes it harder to do the stick. My husband worked as a paramedic, and he says they used to use three tourniquets on gunshot victims to help find their veins. I've asked for three tourniquets at every blood draw since he told me that—decades ago—but no one has ever agreed to do it that way.
Paola and 42 other people liked this
Artina Eslamihaghighat
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Artina Eslamihaghighat
One of the things that work best for me is imagining the blood course through my veins. I don't really know why but it helps me.
Bonnie
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Bonnie
Butterfly needle and be sure to drink plenty of water before the blood draw.
Angi Frieden
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Angi Frieden
I always do about 10 bicep curls with a 5-10 pound weight before a blood draw. Works great as I haven’t had any problems since I started that routine!
12%
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“Thank you, Dr. Thomas-Ramparsad,” I said. “Dr. Nicole,” she corrected, patting me on the arm.
Katherine Center
My good friend Karen Walrond, who is from Trinidad, helped me create this character.
13%
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I mean, “couldn’t see her face” is not exactly right. I could tell there was a face there. In theory. It wasn’t just a blank slate. I could zoom in on eyebrows and laugh lines and lips. It was just that the pieces didn’t fit together right. They didn’t make a face. It was a bit like looking at a Picasso painting. I could see it, I guess. I just couldn’t understand it.
Katherine Center
So, there are two kinds of prosopagnosia: developmental and acquired. Sadie, in this book, has acquired--which results from some kind of damage to the brain (TBI, stroke) and impacts perception. Like, your fusiform face gyrus can see the elements of the face, but can't quite put them together. Developmental prosopagnosia is different. This is a condition folks have had all their lives, and it's more connected to remembering faces than perceiving them. Like, they can see the face just fine when they're looking at it, but then they don't remember the face well enough to recognize it the next time they see it. This is the kind of face blindness Jane Goodall has. Folks who have developmental face blindness often don't know they have it. That's how it's always been, and they figure everybody is like that. They often know they struggle with recognizing people, but they don't know why. With acquired, the change is abrupt and very noticeable. There's a before and an after, and they're different. I went in thinking I'd be writing about developmental, because that was the first kind I knew about but wound up writing about acquired—and I did a ton of reading and research to try to figure out what you're seeing when your perceptions have changed like that. This was the best way I could come up with to describe it!!
19%
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My entire life up until now had been a before. And now I was in the after.
Katherine Center
This is such a strange, overwhelming feeling when it happens. I've felt it a few times with huge, life-changing moments. The times that come to mind are when I've lost loved ones, or had a breakup, or given birth! There's that feeling that a life altering shift has split you off into a new section—and things will never be the same again. Of course, we're changing all the time, and it's impossible to return to how things were even after small changes. But with the big ones, you notice them and feel the shock of them . . . and then it takes a good while to make sense of the new place you find yourself in.
SueK and 12 other people liked this
SueK
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SueK
and equally shocking is that your life has made a dramatic change, and everyone else is walking around like everything is normal.
21%
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It was love at first sight—and I couldn’t even see him. Okay, I take it back. It wasn’t love. Love requires actually having spoken to a person. At the minimum. Maybe it was infatuation at first sight. Or preoccupation. Or obsession. Whatever it was, I wasn’t complaining.
Katherine Center
I probably don't believe in "love at first sight" because I sort of feel like to LOVE a person you need to *know* that person pretty well . . . but I definitely believe in attraction at first sight. Or a spark at first sight. There can be a moment where something in you just recognizes something in another person--something you can't even put into words. Your sense are reading something deep that never even reaches your consciousness that just makes you want to get closer to that person. I don't know what that is, but it's endlessly fascinating to me.
Hazel and 7 other people liked this
Sheila
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Sheila
I agree. I call it chemistry. There’s a definite reaction, and it doesn’t always have to be a romantic thing either. It can also be a friendship. There’s something that just clicks. A kindred- spirit …
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Katherine Center
I made this up, but I'd love it if somebody would invent one!!
25%
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“Nobody has all the answers,” she said when I told her that. “I’m just here to help you ask the right questions.” Exactly what someone who had all the answers would say.
Katherine Center
Sometimes it's comforting to think other people have it all figured out.
Sheila and 1 other person liked this
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“Yes.” Embarrassed I couldn’t recognize them. Embarrassed I couldn’t see them. Afraid of hurting their feelings or snubbing them by accident or seeming like a bitch. Humiliated to not be myself. Disappointed to no longer be a brain surgery poster child. Mortified, ultimately, to not be so not okay that I couldn’t even hide it.
Katherine Center
I'm not typically a person who hides my struggles. Honestly, I'm kind of the opposite--just processing them ad nauseum to friends and relatives. But I totally do get Sadie's instincts here. It's hard to be an altered version of yourself—to not rely on what you've always relied on. I absolutely get this.
Meagan liked this
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And the truest thing I knew about myself was this: I was always happy when I was making things.
Katherine Center
This is just . . . me. This is could be something I wrote in my own journal (though I haven't kept a journal since college). I am always happy when I'm making things. The best way to shift my mood is to make something. A collage, a poem, a painting, a pot-holder, a video. It kind of doesn't even matter what it is, as long as I can get lost in a state of flow in the process.
Deborah liked this
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I just knew, you know? I sensed in an instant something was wrong.
Katherine Center
I've had this feeling many times with many pets!
Sheila and 1 other person liked this
94%
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“So does that mean your ‘friend’ with panic attacks is—” Joe nodded. “An Irish setter. With an irrational fear of fireworks.”
Katherine Center
😂
Christina
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Christina
😂😂😂
Natalina
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Natalina
I loved this part!
95%
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Parker got transferred to Amsterdam for two years, anyway. So for now I have my father and Lucinda to myself, and we have dinner together from time to time.
Katherine Center
I struggled with whether or not to give Parker a redemption arc! I didn't really intend to make her SO terrible. She just kind of . . . *happened* that way? I've had some requests to write a story for Parker and help her become a better person, and I'm not opposed to that! Maybe I'll have to go to Amsterdam for research!!
Katherine Center
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Katherine Center
I agree, Barbara. He was not his best self!
Katherine Center
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Katherine Center
Thank you, Gabrielle!
Carmela devito
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Carmela devito
I absolutely adore all your books and this beauty made it to my top 5 favorite reads for 2023
96%
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How could I ever have walked right past him?
Katherine Center
My husband swears that we met 9 months before we *actually* met, at a holiday party, where he was going up the stairs with a group of guy friends, and I was going down the stairs with a group of girl friends. He still remembers seeing me there—but I don't remember him there at all!
Nazgolack and 41 other people liked this
Julie Brough
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Julie Brough
My husband and I had the same thing happen! I met him at a game night in college and he doesn't remember it. But we balanced it out...I missed the first time he said "I love you." Oops! Haha!
Katherine Center
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Katherine Center
Julie--that's amazing!! So glad you balanced it out!
Natalie
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Natalie
I want to read this one next so bad. I hope I can find it at my library! Katherine Center is my absolute favorite author!
96%
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The more good things you look for, the more you find.
Katherine Center
I think about this all the time and try to remember to look for good things.
Lauren Roberts
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Lauren Roberts
I love this - so true!
Nicole
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Nicole
Love this!
Sheila
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Sheila
Yes! Look for the positive! I trained myself to be a glass-half-full kind of girl!
97%
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Love stories don’t have happy endings because their authors didn’t know any better. They have happy endings because those endings let readers access a rare and precious kind of emotional bliss that you can only get from having something that matters to look forward to.
Katherine Center
This might be the smartest thing I've ever figured out about how love stories / rom-coms / romances work—both as a reader and as a writer. The happy ending exists to create a set of feelings that we could never access without it.
Julianne and 2 other people liked this
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Yes, misery is important. But joy is just as important. The ways we take care of each other matter just as much as the ways we let each other down. Light matters just as much as darkness. Play matters as much as work, and kindness matters as much as cruelty, and hope matters as much as despair. More so, even. Because tragedy is a given, but joy is a choice.
Katherine Center
I think about this all the time. We really do tend discount and undervalue and ignore joy. Or maybe to think that joy is something you can only have when there is no sorrow around. But that's not my experience at all. Joy and sorrow live side by side.