Breath Taking Quotes

“Baldwin wrote that even amid the mess, you have to do something about it.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“And there, in the words of a black civil rights activist, I saw myself. And in that seeing I felt less alone.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“What I didn’t know then was that she might have welcomed my tears. I didn’t take what Jonah taught me about loosening my armor and show Rachel that her fears were my fears too. I wish I’d validated her anguish. Instead, we each stayed guarded, trying to protect ourselves and each other from the terror we felt.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“Because my whole life I’d understood progress to mean moving forward, advancing to something better, higher, more refined. But the progression of Dalia’s disease was going to do the exact opposite. And not knowing what that would look like—and how we’d all handle it—was the scariest part of all.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“Sorrow is a truth, but no more than hope; loss is a truth, but no more than love.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“All we need guard against is the swelling of the emptiness, its displacement of the other truths of our lives.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“Dayeinu—enough—enough already.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“And yet, shouldn’t there be a ceiling on suffering?”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“Now, my sense of self had changed too. There was a chasm between me and the rest of the world, even my most well-meaning friends, because there was no way for me to adequately explain the intensity and fear of my day-to-day existence.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“I guess we were living in another set of parallel universes too. There was the world at home and the public world we used to fit into with ease. Our life at home felt surreal. Our life outside of home felt like a foreign land where nobody spoke our language. Both felt like the twilight zone.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“And I didn’t realize that being whole meant letting them see where I was broken.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“But to do that, I’d need to take off my armor, and my armor was comfortable. It protected me from the slings and arrows coming at me, so I could take care of everything that needed taking care of. I only loosened it at night when I was done being strong. That’s when I’d curl up in the chaise by Dalia’s bed and let the sadness in. I was scared to take it off completely, afraid that if I did, I’d dissolve into a puddle and not be able to tend to my kids, my husband, myself.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“I still wore my armor of to-dos and logistics.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“we learned that we could still be happy, even though we were decimated.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“surrendering is the opposite of defeat.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking

“I started to see the world not through the hazy sheen of my bubble, but through the clarity of the puncture.”
― Jessica Fein, Breath Taking