Quotes from Katrina Kenison

When we focus on what is good and beautiful in someone, whether or not we think that they "deserve" it, the good and beautiful are strengthened merely by the light of our attention.

there is no such thing as a charmed life, not for any of us, no matter where we live or how mindfully we attend to the tasks at hand. But there are charmed moments, all the time, in every life and in every day, if we are only awake enough to experience them when they come and wise enough to appreciate them.

we can learn to trust our maternal selves and to have faith in the innate goodness and purity of our children - even when we feel overwhelmed and the kids are pushing all our buttons. we can support one another....we can be understanding of each other and easier on ourselves.

We are the windows through which our children first see the world. Let us be conscious of the view.

Meaning and purpose come not from accomplishing great things in the world, but simply from loving those who are right in front of you, doing all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place where you are.

Now I see that the journey was never meant to lead to some new and improved version of me; that it has always been about coming home to who I already am.

Perhaps the real point of life is simply to wear us down until we have no choice but to start abandoning our defenses. We learn that the way things are is simply the way they are meant to be right now, and then, suddenly, at long last, we catch a glimpse of the abundance in the moment--abundance even in the face of things falling apart.

I want to hold on tight to everything and everyone I cherished and, at the same time, saw in a way I never had before that living on this earth, growing older, and growing up in the true sense of the word is really about learning how to let go.

One of the greatest challenges I've faced as a mother-especially in these anxious, winner-takes-all times-is the need to resist the urge to accept someone else's definition of success and to try to figure out, instead, what really is best for my own children, what unique combination of structure and freedom, nurturing and challenge, education and exploration, each of them needs in order to grow and bloom.

One thing we've learned this summer is that a house is not an end in itself, any more than "home" is just one geographic location where things feel safe and familiar. Home can be anyplace in which we create our own sense of rest and peace as we tend to the spaces in which we eat and sleep and play. It is a place that we create and re-create in every moment, at every stage of our lives, a place where the plain and common becomes cherished and the ordinary becomes sacred.

Magic wasn't something I had to go in search of; it was here, within me, all the time. When hearts are open, when love is flowing, magic happens.

At times, my nostalgia for our family life as it used to be--for our own imperfect, cherished, irretrievable past--is nearly overwhelming.

Life feels precious. It is.

home is less a location than a discipline. It is a way of being, a domestic, considered attention to familiar routines and the small, essential details of everyday life. From now on, I promised myself, home would be wherever I was, not the place that I one day hoped it to be. I would create it by being present. I would try to do better.

When we focus on what is good and beautiful in someone, whether or not we think that they "deserve" it, the good and the beautiful are strengthened merely by the light of our attention.

This, I suspect, is the territory that lies just ahead and around the curve of today. A place where loss grows more familiar, where joy is harmonized by sorrow, where endings outnumber beginnings, and where kindness becomes a sacrament.

When we focus on what is good and beautiful in someone, whether or not we think that they "deserve" it, the good and beautiful are strengthened merely by the light of our attention. When we choose to see and appreciate what is good and beautiful in our children, that goodness can't help but grow, and their beauty blossoms forth.

If some essential part of me was already disappearing as my children moved into increasingly wider orbits, well then, I wanted to rech out and claim something else to take its place.

Growth and transformation occur not by changing who we are, but as we summon the courage to be who we are.

Reading, reading actively, strengthens the soul.

Home was this whole perfectly contained universe--town, friends, acquaintances, the streets we traveled every day...And we were about to leave it all.

When we focus on what is good and beautiful in someone, whether or not we think that they 'deserve' it, the good and the beautiful are strengthened merely by the light of our attention.

Solitude is the soul's holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead.