Quotes About Adversity

Survival was an unpleasent thing to witness.

No one knows how strong they are until they have to be.

But being a survivor is hard bloody work, harder than it looks, and I think I might be running low on survivor juice. Given the choice, I'd far rather a pampered life of indulgence where nothing bad ever happens.

Drink never drown anyone's sorrows, he went on. It only teaches them how to swim.

I knew then that life was no respecter of circumstance. The force that flings disasters at us doesn't say Well, I won't give her that lump in her breast for another year. Best to let her recover from the death of her mother first. It just goes right on ahead and does whatever it feels like, whenever it feels like it.

The thing about personal growth, I've discovered, is that you rarely get any choice in it. It only ever happens as a side-effect of some loss or trauma.

Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together – Marilyn Monroe

But I thought that if people behaved like victims they would become victims, if people expected the worst to happen then it invariably did. I could see now how wrong I was. Sometimes people don't volunteer to be victims and they become victims anyway.

Accepting all that is given to me and all that is taken away. Recognizing that even loss and pain are gifts.

It might be uncomfortable. But it's an opportunity. An opportunity for what? Personal growth. Internally, I sighed. Wretched personal growth. Always so unpleasant.

Instead of thinking, "Why me?" I think, "Why not me?"' Extract from One Blink at a Time In

Once the door to one disaster had opened, the possibilities for catastrophe seemed open-ended and I felt I'd no choice but to go along with my life as it unraveled.

It never rains but it damn well pours and I was afraid I'd be washed away in the deluge.

Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right.

We must not assume a door is closed but must push on it. We must not assume if it was closed yesterday that it's closed today.

If things are too easy, life is a whole lot less interesting.

Try to avoid complaints. Self-pity even when legitimate never fails to undermine your strength.

Your thorns are the best part of you.

They fought the enemy, we fight fat living and self-pity. Shine, o shine, unfalsifying sun, on this sick scene.

Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor. Perhaps, in a way, that's where humanity is now: about to discover we're not as smart as we thought we were, will be forced by life to surrender our attacks and defenses which avail us of nothing, and finally break through into the collective beauty of who we really are. [ Facebook post , August 31, 2013]

growth can be messy.

There's a biblical story where Jesus says we can build our house on sand or we can build it on rock. Our house is our emotional stability. When it is built on sand, then the winds and rain can tear it down. One disappointing phone call and we crumble; one storm and the house falls down. When our house is built on rock, then it is sturdy and strong and the storms can't destroy it.

I've heard it said that prayer doesn't change a situation for you so much as it changes you for the situation.

The pain you are going through is not what will determine your future; your future will be determined by who you are as you go through your pain.