quotes for your tuesday

I hope you're having a lovely Tuesday. I recently re-read The Mermaid Chair again and it's just lovely...again. I recommend it. Now I'm in the middle of The Secret Life of Bees (which I haven't read since high school). Sue Monk Kidd is just wonderful; her writing is like a cup of tea - so comforting. Anyway, I hope something you read today sticks with you somehow and brings comfort - that's the whole point, right? I'm a born empathizer, but the flip-side of that means I need empathy more than most people, and reading words from others about emotions or life stages helps remind me that I'm not the only one experiencing them.

xoxo 

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.
And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes
you cannot even breathe deeply, and
the night sky is no home, and
you have cried yourself to sleep enough times
that you are down to your last two percent, but

nothing is infinite,
not even loss.

You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day
you are going to find yourself again.  

[Finn Butler]

Little by little, one travels far. 

[JRR Tolkien]

Relax. You will become an adult. 

You will figure out your career. 

You will find someone who loves you. 

You have a whole lifetime; time takes time. 

The only way to fail at life is to abstain. 

[Johanna de Silentio]

For women who are tied to the moon, love alone is not enough. We insist each day wrap it’s knuckles through our heart strings and pull. The lows. The joy. The poetry. We dance at the edge of a cliff, you have fallen off. So it goes. You will climb up again.

You rare girl, once again, you have a body that belongs to no lover, to no father, belongs to no one but you. Wear your sorrow like the lines on your palm. Like a shawl to keep you warm at night. Don’t mourn the love that is lost to you now. It is a book of poems whose meters worked their way into your pulse. Even if it has slipped from your hands, it will stay in your body.

You loved a man who treated you like absinthe, half poison and half god. He tried to sweeten you, to water you down. So you left. And now you have your heart all to yourself again. A heart like a stone cottage. Heart like a lover’s diary. Hope like an ocean.

[Anais Nin]

Solitude is chosen separation for refining your soul. 

Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first. 

[Wayne Cordeiro]

Have patience with all things – but first with yourself. 

Never confuse your mistakes with your value as a human being. 

You are a perfectly valuable, creative, worthwhile person simply because you exist. 

And no amount of triumphs or tribulations can ever change that. 

[Saint Frances de Sales]

The fact that you're struggling doesn't make you a burden. It doesn't make you unlovable or undesirable or undeserving of care. It doesn't make you too much or too sensitive or too needy. It makes you human. Everyone struggles. Everyone has a difficult time coping, and at times, we all fall apart. During those times, we aren't always easy to be around - and that's okay. No one is easy to be around one hundred percent of the time. Yes, you may sometimes be unpleasant or difficult. And yes, you may sometimes do or say things that make the people around you helpless or sad. But those things aren't all of who you are and they certainly don't discount your worth as a human being. The truth is that you can be struggling and still be loved. You can be difficult and still be cared for. You can be less than perfect, and still be deserving of compassion and kindness. 

[Daniell Koepke]

Yes, of course I realized that the paintings were a series of self-portraits – how could I not? – yet I didn’t control them. They came like eruptions, like geysers. I didn’t know when the diving would stop, what spectrum of the rainbow the water would turn next, where the bottom was or what might happen when the woman reached it. 

[Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair]