Resilience Quotes

“You cannot change the wind, but you can adjust the sails.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“Leave me if you must, but be faithful to me if you are with me.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“... all things are possible if you are willing to put yourself on the line. You cannot stand back and hope for the best. You have to act.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“And although we can escape something’s presence, there is no way to escape its absence.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“In the end, there is peace. If we are strong, if we are resilient, if we are stubborn and filled with hope, if we know how to love, there is peace before that, too. And, honestly, that is enough.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“But we cannot, they cannot turn back. This is the life we have now, and the only way to find peace, the only way to be resilient when these landmines explode beneath your foundation, is first to accept that there is a new reality.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“I was dying and he had chosen to spend time with someone so completely unlike me. I saw my death not simply as a transition for my family but as my complete erasure from my family's life.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities

“It was simply the last thing. One day, I did not want to try anymore. The harsh words that had hurt me once did not hurt. I simply wanted to be away from all of the things I had tried to accept.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“that is in my control is how I live now. I could fill the days with fears—there are plenty of those—or I could fill them with the best joys I can cobble together. My husband wrote, in his book Four Trials—in part, I admit, on my recommendation, “I have learned two great lessons—that there will always be heartache and struggle, and that people of strong will can make a difference. One is a sad lesson, the other is inspiring. I choose to be inspired.” There is enough unhappiness and pain to fill my days, but I choose to be happy.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“Part of resisting the disease is captured in simply not letting the fear of tomorrow control the quality of today. The Rodgers and Hammerstein song from The King and I makes the point better than I can: I whistle a happy tune, and every single time, the happiness in the tune convinces me that I’m not afraid. Powering through the fear may seem like denial, but fear doesn’t change the prognosis. It only changes the way I would feel between now and whenever the inevitable occurs. So that is what I did.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“I felt alone. There is part of this disease that belongs only to me. I never felt comfortable sharing the moments when logic left and the pain of the treatment magnified the risk of dying, when fear did come in. What could the people who love me do, anyway, I figured. It would only make them feel lousy that they could not honestly say anything that would change the reality I was facing. This is the catch-22: We protect them when they want and need to protect us, when they know we want and need protection. With each side protecting the other, neither of us gets what we want or need. But I always figured it was impossible to get what we needed. I had the disease, they could not change that. All I could do was guess what their reaction would be to my expression of my fears—impotence, I guessed—and what was the point of that? I kept from them my greatest fears precisely because they would respond with protestations that this was about tending to me, not about tending to them. And they, though they might keep a stiff upper lip with me, would, I discovered later, fall apart alone in fear and grief. They could not ask me to carry them through this. In our way of being gentle with each other, we never really see it from each other’s perspective. I had to decide what I should share. My conclusion? I have shared very little. Maybe not talking about the fear was better anyway, not allowing it to own any more of me than it already did. And if it is not better, well, fortunately, we have more days to get it right.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“What did I do? Even though I think I know better, I still continue to ask and I continue to wonder. And then I remind myself: This is the world we made; its flaws are our flaws; its shortcomings are our shortcomings; and the degree to which there is injustice or unprovoked suffering is just a reflection of our failures. But because, in order to reach this point, I have to accept a God who does not intervene, I have to accept that I cannot expect intervention now. I do not pray for my health. God gave me this world, and He gave me free will. It is my world, and now, if I am able, I have to fix it.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“Ovid wrote Metamorphoses, in which he described the endurance of literature in the epilogue? Now I have done my work. It will endure,
I trust, beyond Jove’s anger, fire, and sword,
Beyond time’s hunger. The day will come, I know,
So let it come, that day which has no power
Save over my body, to end my span of life
Whatever it may be. Still, part of me,
The better part, immortal will be borne
Above the stars; …
I shall be read, and through all centuries,
If prophecies of bards are ever truthful,
I shall be living, always.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“My God, my new understanding of God is that he does not promise us protection and intervention. He promises only salvation and enlightenment. This is our world, a gift from God, and we make it what it is. If it is unjust, we have made it so. If there is boundless misery, we have permitted it. If there is suffering, it came from man’s own action or inaction. Abel killed Cain; God did not.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“Sometimes we have to give ourselves space to grieve what we have lost: a person, a way of life, a dream. But at some point we have to stand up and say, this is my new life and in this life I need a new job.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

“these lives no longer exist and the more we cling to the hope that these old lives might come back, the more we set ourselves up for unending discontent.”
― Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword