Quotes About Resilience

The people in my life were like the BandAids that had blown away in the desert wind that first day on the trail. They scattered and then they were gone.

It was the thing that had grown in me that I'd remember years later, when my life became unmoored by sorrow. The thing that would make me believe that hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was my way back to the person I used to be.

Going down, I realized, was like taking hold of the loose strand of yarn on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.

Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid. I

Of all the things that convinced me that I should not be afraid while on this journey, of all the things I'd made myself believe so I could hike the PCT, the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety: nothing bad could happen to me, I thought. The worst thing already had.

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave.

The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.

Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

but because even in my darkest days-those very days in which I was naming myself-I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn't have known before.

Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It's up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.

If we rise, they will rise with us every time, no matter how many times we've fallen before. I hope you will remember that the next time you fail. I hope I will too.

you're going to have to get on that horse and ride into battle like a warrior.

The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will. I have learned this over and over and over again.

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told.

Every part of my body hurt. Except my heart. I saw no one, but, strange as it was, I missed no one. I longed for nothing but food and waterr and to be able to pt my backpack down

hen it comes to our children, we do not have the luxury of despair. If we rise, they will rise with us every time, no matter how many times we've fallen. Remembering that is the most important work we can

Would it ring? It would not ring. Should you call? You should not call. But you always called. You couldn't help but call because your heart was crushed and you thought maybe if you talked it out ONE MORE TIME the person who crushed your heart would change his/her mind and uncrush it.

It was exactly like attempting to lift a Volkswagen Beetle. It looked so cute, so ready to be lifted—and yet it was impossible to do.

I'd come, I realized, to stare that fear down, to stare everything down, really—all that I'd done to myself and all that had been done to me. I couldn't do that while tagging along with someone else.

There are so many tiny revolutions in a life, a million ways we have to circle around ourselves to grow and change and be okay.

And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard.

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, and The Optimist's Daughter,

There is no why. You don't have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you're holding. And, dear one, you and I both were granted a mighty generous hand.

I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprising of all, that I could carry it. That I could bear the unbearable.