Quotes About Resilience

Vicarious traumatization. It can happen to those who bear secondary witness to the traumas of others.

You were the same person, no matter what state you happened to be stuck breathing in.

Depression was, in some ways, a crisis of energy. I had heard her say that before; we were in reruns.

Grandma and I were cautiously polite to each other. "Make yourself at home, Dolores," she said hesitantly as she opened the door to what had once been my mother's bedroom. The room smelled dry and dusty. The windows were stuck closed and there were little rows of insect carcasses along the sill. When I sat down on the hard mattress, it crackled under me.

Change what you can, accept what you can't, and be smart enough to know the difference.

This is where the pot is strongest now: at the place where it had been broken.

I'm not supposed to need fixing; I'm the strong one—the lookout.

and yet she continues to skip rope in my mind and on my canvases, raising her dark, hopeful face to the sky, innocent of the depth of people's cruelty toward "the other"—those who, for whatever reason, must swim against the tide instead of letting it carry them. . . .

Change what you can, accept what you can't, and be smart enough to know the difference. Viveca comes downstairs first and heads into the

If you squinted while looking at her from across a room, you would swear Mrs. Nord was Jackie Kennedy. My own mother sat alone on Bobolink Drive all day, talking to her parakeet, Petey, and worrying about dead children. Around the time of our move to Bobolink Drive, I stopped kissing my mother on the lips. It had been over four years since she'd lost the baby.

It's a free country," I said. "Granny babes." That night up in my room I pulled Ma's flying leg out from behind the dresser and saw, for the first time, that it was beautiful. I hung it above my bed.

Love was always the thing that did that-smashed into you, left you raw. The deeper you loved, the deeper it hurt.

AFTER I DELIVERED VELVET BACK to the farmhouse that night, I entered the condo and walked over to my Minotauromachia. And as I stood before it, it was crystal clear to me that the terrible monster was doomed in the face of the powerful little girl.

We buried my husband, Claude, today, finally. Me and Belinda Jean. His emphysema took him nine days ago, but the wake and funeral had to be put off because of the flood. McPadden's Funeral Parlor was in the water's path.

Life is messy, violent, confusing, and hopeful.

Change what you can, accept what you can't, and be smart enough to know the difference

If there was a nuclear holocaust, there'd probably be two surviving life forms: cockroaches and Cher.

Look back on the past but don't stare

Here is a girl who is pretty in a quiet way, I told myself. I bet she's had a very hard life.

Life's absurd. Live authentically. Stop whining. Bam! I got into it.

thought about how love was always the thing that did that—smashed into you, left you raw. The deeper you loved, the deeper it hurt. .

busting his agates

Stop it! My whole life still hurts!

Ask any of us cynical bastards. to lift up our shirt, and we'll show you where we got shot in the heart.