Blessings and quotes

“When the souls rise up in glory, 

yours shall not be shunned nor sundered, 

but shall be the prize of the gods' gardens. 

Even your darkness shall be treasured then, 

and all your pain made holy.” 

― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

Your Father calls you to His Court.

You need not pack;

you go garbed in glory as you stand.

He eagerly awaits by His palace doors to welcome you,

and has prepared a place at His high table by His side,

in the company of 

the great-souled,

honored, 

and best-beloved.

-Ista, Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

The old kings had two tasks:

to lead their men to battle and to lead them home again.

Horseriver lost sight of the second, I think, 

in his black madness and despair.  

These warriors of the Old Weald- 

their duty to their king is done; 

there remains only their king's duty to them.

-Ingrey, The Hallowed Hunt, Bujold

Ra's al-Ghul

Embrace the pain,
for it is your soul finally being unburdened.

-Ra's al-Guhl
Arrow, S3: E20

Survivors, Iron Fist

Danny:  It seems like you're just making this up as you go along.

Stick:  I am, kid.  That's what survivors do.

If I Die

I would like to be able to save someone
even if it isn't myself.

***

I have more.
I'm loved more.
I have already overcome.
-Casey

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

"The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."

-Neil deGrasse Tyson

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel quotes

"All we know about the future is that it will be different.
But perhaps what we far is that it will be the same.
So we must celebrate the change."

"-I'm not sure what I shall do.  Nothing here has worked out quite as I expected.

-Most things don't.  But you know, sometimes what happens instead is the good stuff."

"In India we have a saying:
Everything will be all right in the end.
So if it is not all right, it is not the end."

"You only know if you really care."

Quotes

"When the bells ring out for the first time in four years,

let us remember our brothers fallen in the field

and victory."

Warhorse

"It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has."

Hippocrates

"Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil."

Aristotle

"You know, being aware of your crap and actually overcoming your crap are two very different things."

Cristina, Grey's Anatomy S4.E6

 

 

Grief

When the fantasy is all that I have...

On mental illness

Oh, sweetie, I woke with you on my heart this morning.  I realized that I want to say, "I lament this.  I lament for you.  I lament for M.  I lament for J and K.  And I lament for Ms. I."

You are not alone.

Mental illness is a whole 'nother kettle of fish in which the normal cause and effect cycles don't match.  So everyone who tries to make them match up, "If only you'd..." or "Have you tried..." is trying to change the effect by changing a relational cause.  But the cause of severe, persistent mental illness is not relational or the behavior of others; its' locus is within the person.  There is not always a way to break into that internal cycle to change it.  And continuing to believe that someone outside the system can interrupt that self-contained cycle by acting or talking or even medicating... well, sometimes we can but sometimes that's not granted to us.  Sometimes the internal cycle is so driving that the person can't stop and so closed that nothing can penetrate it.  At least nothing we know.  And that's why severe, persistent mental illness is so severe and persistent.  It's not because people don't try but it's that we can't reach it.  It hasn't been granted to us.

Sometimes helping the ones we love most is not granted to us.

And that is lamentable.

I do not say, "I'm sorry for Ms. I" or for my family members with mental illness like I used to because that implies that it was somehow my fault, that I am somehow culpable, that I somehow need to make amends.  It is not my responsibility because I am not able to respond.  I can't reach the problem.  Never have been able to.  Tried and broke myself trying.  Can not respond.  Am not responsible.

This breaks my heart and keeps on breaking it.  But it is not within my ability to respond so I lament but don't apologize anymore, not even in my own head. 

I caught myself praying this morning, "I'm sorry for Ms. I" but I interrupted myself and changed to, "I lament this for Ms. I.  I lament for her family.  And I especially lament for her mom."

Do you know how on KTIS they do that thing called the Drive-through Difference where someone pays for the order of the person behind them?  Well, let's just say, I've paid four decades of my life into this so I'm hoping you get a meal out of it now. 

You, dear, are responsible for your choices and you've used your ability to respond to learn better parenting skills and go to therapy yourself and take her to therapy and talk calmly and set good boundaries and get her evaluated and take her to get meds.  Her choice to refuse your help and your decision to stand ready to help but no longer try to force it on her is so, so healthy.  I am so very proud of you and I wish that my family and I had done the same many, many years ago instead of breaking ourselves and our whole family system on trying to control what we can't reach.

You've tried.

It hasn't been granted.

You're waiting to do her good when she asks.

It is still lamentable and will continue to be lamentable.

But you are choosing wisely within it.

I've never been more glad to be your friend.

I've taken my turn and had my say.  Give me a call after 3:00 if you want me to listen.

Love,

Amy

unsafe

They think they got away with it.
They burn their victim.
They blow him up.
They toss him in the ocean.
They bury them in the desert.
They throw 'em through wood chippers.
Sometimes, you know, years go by.
They relax.
Then they start living their lives like they didn't do anything wrong.
Life they didn't spend somebody else's life in order to get what they got.
They think they're safe from retribution,
but, you know,

you make those bastards unsafe.

--Booth, Bones 1:19

This is my brave

Amazing stuff I want to remember.

https://thisismybrave.org/

Awe

Good catch, Ginger!
This is a great article about how a sense of awe improves health.
Went for a walk in the fog this morning and I do feel better.

Teddy Roosevelt's Man in the Arena

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

More good books

Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life, Eric Greitens

Forager's Harvest, Samuel Thayer

Restoration Agriculture: Real World Permaculture for Farmers, Mark Shepard

Stanford Rape Letters

https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.bgdzlXxzE#.fv802xO0M

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2852614-Letter-from-Brock-Turner-s-Father.html

http://johnpavlovitz.com/2016/06/06/to-brock-turners-father-from-another-father/

Mansplaining

Mansplaining video.

So funny and so spot on.

How do we as women interrupt the cycle?

good books

Before I forget to document them, I want to write down some good books I've been reading.

Fire Logic, Laurie Marks

Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks

Moghul Buffet, Cheryl Benard

10% Human: How Your Bodies Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness, Alanna Collen

Back in Control: A spine surgeon's roadmap out of chronic pain, David Hanscom, MD

Gandhi the Man:How one man changed himself to change the world, Eknath Easwaran

Songs of the Humpback Whale

I recently read a very thought-provoking book titled Songs of the Humpback Whale by Jodi Picoult.  It is a story about trauma told in the five voices of five different main characters including four who interweave to tell the story chronologically and one who starts at the conclusion and tells the story in reverse chronological order until she gets to the beginning of the timeline while everyone else's narrative is concluding.

I haven't really digested it all.  Hearing the story from five people's perspective, one in reverse, is fascinating as is the theme of unresolved trauma.  Perhaps all trauma remains at some level unresolved.  Perhaps that's what makes it traumatic- our very lack of ability to digest it completely or to fully understand each other or ourselves in it.  Listening to these five characters struggling to understand themselves and engage with each other exposed them- their vulnerabilities, their hopes, their griefs, their best attempts at living well.

This is a book which I will want to read again.

On Freedom

"Now that we're finally free,
I get why we fought so hard.
The real gift isn't freedom.
It's what we get to do with it.
I don't know about you,
but I never could just sit on a beach anyway."
-Nikita, S4:E6

Daughter, Have I Told You?

Met an author, Rachel Coyne.  Both our sons were playing in the same basketball practices.  I checked out her books and was taken with her poem, Daughter, Have I Told You?

Daughter, have I told you?

You are of women whose words are wildflowers.
Whose stomachs are soft hills 
and whose shoulders are the river's marshy end.

You are of women with feet as heavy as the gray stones of the riverbed,
and hair as thick and tangled as the prairie.

Our arms are the tree trunks
and our faces are the horizon
where wheat will coax the sun to sleep.

Daughter, have I told you?

You are of women whose hands are the harvest.
Whose hearts are the deep, deep lakes
and whose voices are the silver birch of the woodland.

You are of women with tongues long like the river winding out tales as old as the Mississippi.

Our lives are the solid earth beneath you feet
and our embrace. like the paths of the buffalo, circles the heart's land.

Daughter, have I told you?

These women, like your momma and grandmama, 
will stretch up from the earth, dark and strong like trees.

And you, little one,
will sit in our branches
and feel cool wind blow.