Quotes About Resilience

The idea began to sink in, more than it ever had, that I might be crazy, in the traditional sense of the word. That I might be, forever and ever amen, a Crazy Person. That's what we'd suspected all along, what I'd been working so hard to disprove, what might be true. I preferred, by far, being dead.

The joy is an absurd yellow tulip, popping up in my life, contradicting all the evidence that shows it should not be there.

The madness is there, and will always be there. But it will keep sleeping, as long as I don't wake it up.

And so i went through the looking glass, stepped into the nether world, where up is down and food is greed, where convex mirrors cover the walls where death is honour and flesh is weak. It is ever so easy to go. Harder to find your way back.

Bear in mind you have a life to live. There is an incredible loss. There is a profound grief. And there is, in the end, after a long time and more work than you ever thought possible, a time when it gets easier.

It does not hit you until later. The fact that you were essentially dead does not register until you begin to come alive. Frostbite does not hurt until it starts to thaw. First it is numb. Then a shock of pain rips through the body. And then, every winter after, it aches.

I relish my life. It's the one I have. It's difficult, beautiful, painful, full of laughter, passing strange. Whatever else it is, whatever it brings – it's mine.

Here's the hell of it: madness doesn't announce itself. There isn't time to prepare for its coming. It shows up without calling and sits in your kitchen ashing in your plant. You ask how long it plans to stay; it shrugs its shoulders, gets up, and starts digging through the fridge.

There are other kinds of damage, to the people in your life, to your sense of who you are and what you can do, to your future

There is no right," she says. "There's the best you can do. And that's fine. That's normal.

I have a word. Now it will be better. Now it has a name, and if it has a name, it's a real thing, not merely my imagination gone wild. If it has a name, if it isn't merely an utter failure on my part, if it's a disease, bipolar disorder, then it has an answer. Then it has a cure.

I relish my life. It is a life of which I am fiercely protective. I have wrested it back from madness, and madness cannot take it from me again. I will not throw it away. So what if it isn't a normal life? It's the one I have.

There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.

It is not a sudden leap from sick to well. It is a slow, strange meander from sick to mostly well. The misconception that eating disorders are a medical disease in the traditional sense is not helpful here. There is no 'cure'. A pill will not fix it, though it may help. Ditto therapy, ditto food, ditto endless support from family and friends. You fix it yourself. It is the hardest thing that I have ever done, and I found myself stronger for doing it. Much stronger.

And so I went through the looking glass, stepped into the netherworld, where up is down and food is greed, where convex mirrors cover the walls, where death is honor and flesh is weak. It is ever so easy to go. Harder to find your way back.

This is the very boring part of eating disorders, the aftermath. When you eat and hate that you eat. And yet of course you must eat. You don't really entertain the notion of going back. You, with some startling new level of clarity, realize that going back would be far worse than simply being as you are. This is obvious to anyone without an eating disorder. This is not always obvious to you.

Shine, baby, shine, be graceful child of mine. Be like the firefly who glows no matter how the darkness grows. Shine, baby, shine

Maybe all men should have to fight for something sometime in their lives. I'm thirty-three years old and I've never had to fight for a blessed thing, have I?

Courage is the answer. Because courage doesn't negate the problem, it exists within the problem. And when you realize the answer lies in taking the problem and living in spite of it, with full awareness of it, you feel a new option and a new sense of hope and life.

This morning, when I got my mail there's concrete all over the ground cement, you know and these little clovers the little green clovers, like from St. Patrick's Day the plant were growing up out of the cement no dirt and no nothing and no rain and there they were, growing up out of the cement, and I was thinking "that's like me."

Thank you for praying for me, and wishing me well, and all the support, because I need it a lot. And inside me there is a warrior, but right now, I am a 'Golden Girl'... But I wanted to let you guys know that I have not died, and I am here, and I am going to fight with all I have got to stay and to help. And I have never been in this bad a condition, but I am determined.

I tried to be what you wanted me to be But you didn't want a girl you wanted MACHINE ... I can't be part of this machine I got too much heart to keep it in I can't be part of your machine I promise this is not the end

If you find yourself to be a sort of an abrasive type of person, perhaps you might try to be gentle, because the truth is that gentleness and kindness are a lot more powerful than we are led to believe. And if you are like this, and people are telling you it doesn't work, don't listen to them do what you know is right.

Hears the music under the rock One of these days he'll stop Don't stop when the music stops.