Women Rowing North Quotes

“We don’t see the world as it is, but rather as we are. If we are angry and bitter, we find proof of hostility wherever we look. If we are trusting, we look for evidence of kindness.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“A woman is like a tea bag—you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” —Eleanor Roosevelt “Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can … across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.” —Cheryl Strayed”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“In family relationships, we may be the caretakers and comforters, but our friends take care of us. The richness and joy of these relationships cannot be described in words. We can define wealth for women our age in terms of our time with close women friends.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“When we experience a sad event it is natural to react to it with pain. The first arrow is the event. Our prolonged reactions to the event are the second arrows. It is natural to need time to recover. But we made it harder for ourselves when we second guess ourselves and feel guilty or ashamed. Instead we can work with and modify these emotions from the second arrow. We can have both the courage to accept our suffering and the skills to move beyond it. We can pardon ourselves and all those around us.

This may be the most important thing - that we learn to grant ourselves mercy. That we forgive ourselves, that we accept our pain, mistakes, and vulnerability, and somehow manage to love ourselves and our own lives. ...And it is only when we grant ourselves mercy that we can extend this mercy to others.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Part of what allows us to deeply appreciate our lives and savor our time is our past despair. In fact, it has great value as a springboard for growth. There is an ancient and almost universal cycle that involves trauma, despair, struggle, adaptation, and resolution. This is a deepening cycle that prepares us for whatever comes next. It opens our hearts to others and helps us feel grateful for every small pleasure.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Of course, ultimately ageism is a prejudice against one’s own future self.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“The shorter we think our lives will be, the more likely we are to do things that are meaningful and give us pleasure. Awareness of death catapults us toward joy and reflection.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“happiness depends on how we deal with what we are given.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“How much of my time should I spend doing things that are good for me? And how much time should I save to do things that are important to me?”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Grief is a circular staircase.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“To be happy we need to learn how to structure a day that is rich in meaning and joy-producing activities. How we spend our time defines who we are. There is no magical future. Today is our future. Our lives are events that unfurl in real time, minute by minute.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“As I grow older, I try not to focus on my regrets and failures, but rather to focus on what I’ve accomplished.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Suffering gives us empathy, while happiness gives us hope and energy.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Education is teaching children to find pleasure in the right things.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Gratitude is a life skill that can be improved with practice. Even during the toughest trials, we can learn to find things to enjoy and appreciate. I don't mean to imply that we can manage to be grateful every moment. That would be an unrealistic demand on ourselves. Feeling grateful is not a moral injunction but rather a healthy habit that we can learn to employ with grater frequency.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Working on my book about refugees, I learned a great deal about trauma and recover, and with the help of the people I spoke with developed what I called "a healing package of treatments." These treatments could be medical interventions from Western doctors, traditional medicines from the refugee's culture of origin, or basic pleasures. For example, a common healing package for a refugee family included going to city parks, cooking foods from their homelands, and meeting people who spoke their language.

All of us can create our own healing packages by thinking about that which makes us feel healthy, calm, and happy. We can write our own prescriptions for health that include nutrition and exercise, relationships, things we enjoy, and gratitude.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Those who do not suffer become insufferable. Our depth comes from experiencing a wide range of emotions, including profound tragedy and our strength comes from that which could destroy us. As we grow from heartbreak, we increase out pain tolerance. As my friend Nora put it, "Leona's death prepared me for my son's burn accident, and that prepared me for this terrible moment when my sister is dying. I know how hard life can be, so I enjoy every good day.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“We don’t become our wisest selves without effort. Our growth requires us to become skilled in perspective taking, in managing our emotions, in crafting positive narratives, and in forming intimate relationships. We develop the skills of building joy,”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Resilience is built by attention and intention. We can take responsibility for our attitudes and focus on our strengths and our joys. We can go deep and face truth squarely. We can learn the skills that allow us to adapt to anything.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Illumination often comes from small experiences that grow by attention. Illumination leads to more illumination.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“We can slowly train ourselves to think in stories that allow us to flourish. We hone our skills in perspective taking, emotional processing, and reframing.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Closing the day is a vital part of experiencing a good day. As we wait for sleep to come, it’s soothing to reflect upon what happened during the day that we learned from, felt proud of, or enjoyed, and to reenvision our happiest moments. We can also pray or meditate—much more calming activities than worrying.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.” —Eleanor Roosevelt”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“One of the secrets of happiness is having a host of activities that we can enjoy when we are alone. The more we can do this, the more likely we are to enjoy our lives as we age.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Whether or not we have a family, we need to live interdependently with others. Our growth depends on interaction: isolation is the quickest path to stagnation.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Resilience is built by attention and intention.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Like Willow, we all can honor our pain and then move toward something more joyful. We can focus on our resilience and remember our joys or sorrows. We can craft stories that tell us we are loved, strong, resilient, respected, worthy, generous, forgiven, and happy. We all have such stories if only we can uncover them....

To rewrite our story, we need effort and imagination. We can access imagination by journaling, painting, music, or art. One of my favorite things about writing is that I get to tell a second story about whatever happens to me. And, in this second story I can shape events in ways that are more beautiful and happiness-producing. Indeed, what is all art if not an attempt to tell a better story?

Some of our stories bring out the best in us, whereas others induce despair, fear or anger. We can ask ourselves questions that remind us of our kindness, hard work, and strength over the years. We can explore our uncelebrated virtues and our survival skills.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“Caregiving for most women can be immensely fulfilling and terribly difficult. It's the ultimate "both/and" experience. It provides us with the opportunity to feel useful, but at the same time, it can be isolating and hard on our health”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“With each new stage of life, we outgrow the strategies that worked for us at an earlier stage. We find ourselves in an environment that pelts us with more challenges than our current self can manage. If we don't grow bigger, we can become bitter. When our problems become too big for us, our healthiest response is to expand our capacities. That growth is qualitative. We become deeper, kinder to ourselves and others, and more capable of bliss.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age

“for unknown blessings that are already on their way.”
― Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age