Quotes About Connection

once my mother started dying, something inside of me was dead to Paul, no matter what he did or said. ..What did he know about losing anything? His parents were still alive and happily married to each other. My connection with him and his gloriously unfractured life only seemed to increase my pain. It wasn't his fault. Being with him felt unbearable, but being with anyone else did too. The only person I could bear to be with was the most unbearable person of all: my mother.

We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, where we say we love them or not.

The Dream of a Common Language

She loved horses and Hank Williams and had a best friend named Babs.

We didn't exchange a word. Not because we felt so alone in our grief, but because we were so together in it, as if we were one body instead of two.

Someone was in here. It was me. I was here. I felt it in a way I hadn't in ages: the me inside of me, occupying my spot in the fathomless Milky Way.

I prayed to the whole wide universe and hoped that God would be in it, listening to me.

So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.

Our parents are the primal source. We make our own lives, but our origin stories are theirs. They go back with us to the beginning of time.

A perfect couple is a wholly private thing. No one but the two people in the perfect relationship know for certain whether they're in one. Its only defining quality is that it's composed of two people who feel perfectly right about sharing their lives with each other, even during the hard times.

As she dressed to go, she found that she couldn't put on her own socks and she called me into her room and asked me to help. She sat on the bed and I got down on my knees before her. I had never put socks on another person, and it was harder than I thought it would be.

When you're speaking in the truest, most intimate voice about your life, you are speaking with the universal voice.

She hadn't held back a thing, not a single lick of her love.

waiting for a friend to get off

You must love in order to be loved. You must be inclusive in order to feel yourself among the included. You must give in order to receive.

He seemed like someone I'd always known even if I never saw him again.

We'd have long conversations during which I'd weep and tell him everything and he would cry with me and try to make it all just a tiny bit more okay, but his words rang hollow. It was almost as if I couldn't hear them at all. What did he know about losing anything?

But she would never get there, no matter how wide she stretched her arms. The amount that she loved us was beyond her reach. It could not be quantified or contained.

I howled and howled and howled, rooting my face into her body like an animal.

She'd been dead an hour. Her limbs had cooled, but her belly was still an island of warm. I pressed my face into the warmth and howled some more.

It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild.

Someone's in here," I called, though that was obvious. Someone was in here. It was me. I was here. I felt in a way I hadn't in ages: the me inside of me, occupying my spot in the fathomless Milky Way.

I want you to have it because I can see that you walk with the spirits of the animals, with the spirits of the earth and the sky.

I felt it in a way I hadn't in ages: the me inside of me, occupying my spot in the fathomless Milky Way.