• (about sensitive people) « In most cultures, folks like Tish are identified early, set apart as shamans, medicine people, poets, and clergy. They are considered eccentric but critical to the survival of the group because they are able to hear things others don't hear and see things others don't see and feel things others don't feel. The culture depends on the sensitivity of a few, because nothing can be healed if it's not sensed first. » p15
• « That day, I began returning to myself (…) when a kind woman revealed to me that being fully human is not about feeling happy, it's about feeling everything. From that day for-ward, I began to practice feeling it all. » p50
• « I decided that before I ever vowed myself to another person, I'd take this vow to myself: I'll not abandon myself. Not ever again. Me and myself: We are till death do us part. We'll forsake all others to remain whole. I unbecame a woman who believed that another would complete me when I decided that I was born complete. » p76
• « "Mona Lisa and her husband lost a baby. Sometime later, her husband commissioned this painting from da Vinci to celebrate the birth of another baby. Mona Lisa sat for Leonardo to paint her, but she wouldn't smile during the sitting. Not all the way. The story goes that da Vinci wanted her to smile wider, but she refused. She did not want the joy she felt for her new baby to erase the pain she felt from losing the first. There in her half smile is her half joy. Or maybe it's her full joy and her full grief all at the same time. She has the look of a woman who has just realized a dream but still carries the lost dream inside her. She wanted her whole life to be present on her face. She wanted everyone to remember, so she wouldn't pretend."
Now I understand what the fuss is all about. Mona Lisa is the patron saint of honest, resolute, fully human women— women who feel and who know. » p96
• « My husband's infidelity was a jagged gift, because it forced me to see that being a good wife wasn't enough to keep my marriage together. Being a good mother wasn't enough to keep my kids from pain. Being a good world saver wasn't enough to save my own world. » p100
• « No. That is not the understanding of brave I want my children to have. I do not want my children to become people who abandon themselves to please the crowd. Brave does not mean feeling afraid and doing it anyway. Brave means living from the inside out. Brave means, in every uncertain moment, turning inward, feeling for the Knowing, and speaking it out loud.
Since the Knowing is specific, personal, and ever changing, so is brave. Whether you are brave or not cannot be judged by people on the outside. Sometimes being brave requires letting the crowd think you're a coward. Sometimes being brave means letting everyone down but yourself. » p104
• « One of my favorite words is selah.
Selah is found in the Hebrew Bible seventy-four times. Scholars believe that when it appears in the text, it is a direction to the reader to stop reading and be still for a moment, because the previous idea is important enough to consider deeply. The poetry in scripture is meant to transform, and the scribes knew that change begins through reading but can be completed only in quiet contemplation. Selah appears in Hebrew music, too. It's believed to be a signal to the music director to silence the choir for a long moment, to hold space between notes. The si-lence, of course, is when the music sinks in.
Selah is the holy silence when the recipient » p136
• « We've decided that our job as her parents is not to keep her happy. Our job is to keep her human. » p160
• « Listen. Every time you re given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing your-self, your duty is to disappoint that someone else.
Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself. » p173
• « There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu » p254