Quotes About Transition

I don't know why, when it comes to death, we say we lost someone. They're not missing or misplaced. They're whisked away from the tightest embrace.

You'd be surprised. Charlie said. You go to bed one night singing her a lullaby, and she wakes up listening to Limp Bizkit. What the hell is Limp Bizkit?

Daniel understood that in the blink of an eye you might reinvent yourself. He understood that the person you were yesterday might not be the person you are tomorrow.

This sort of obsessing would get him nowhere. He needed to move on, to get going, to look forward.

I've thought a lot about it: how you can ricochet from a moment where you are on top of the world to one where you are crawling at rock bottom. I've thought about all the things I could have done differently, and if it would have led to another outcome. But thinking doesn't change anything, does it?

She isn't the girl who used to live next door, hasn't been for years. Back then she had freckles and jeans with holes at the knees and a ponytail yanked so tight it made her eyes pull at the corners. Now she wears pantyhose and tailored suits; she has had the same short bob hairstyle for five years. But when Patrick gets close enough, she still smells like childhood to him.

It is a strange thing, being suddenly motherless. It's like losing a rudder that was keeping me on course, one that I never paid much mind to before now. Who will teach me how to parent, how to deal with the unkindness of strangers, how to be humble? You already did, I realize.

But I love you, Trixie said. There was no easy switch that she could flip to stem the flow of feelings, no way to drain the memories that pooled like acid in her stomach because her heart no longer knew what to do with them. She couldn't blame Jason; she didn't like herself like this, either. But she couldn't go back to being the girl she'd been before she met him; that girl was gone. So where did that leave her?

She didn't like herself like this, either. But she couldn't go back to being the girl she'd been before she met him; that girl was gone. So where did that leave her?

What twisted deity would grant you the superpower of fatherhood to protect someone who, one day, would not need you?

At any moment, a person can start over. And that's not half a life, but simply a real one.

Every beginning is already the start of the end

The Center had suffered scars from the cuts of politicians and the barbs of protesters. It had licked its wounds and healed. At one point it had been called the Center for Women and Reproductive Health. But there were those who believed if you do not name a thing, it ceases to exist, and so its title was amputated, like a war injury. But still, it survived. First it became the Center for Women. And then, just: the Center.

And then one day, you turn around, and your baby is a man.

you eventually make the decision to divide your life in half—before and after—with loss being that tight bubble in the middle. You can move around in spite of it; you can laugh and smile and carry on with your life, but all it takes is one slow range of motion, a doubling over, to be fully aware of the empty space at your center.

So you see, the real question isn't how I left this world to go to the woods. It's how I made myself come back.

Stop trying to act like nothing happened. Because something did, and you can't make it go back to being the same

It's funny, how fast life changes. One minute you are present, and the next, you might find yourself futilely trying to get back to the world you were once part of. You might find yourself looking for people who can no longer hear you. You are in the world, but not of it.

A flight attendant is the guide who helps you navigate that passage smoothly. As a death doula, I do the same thing, but the journey is from life to death, and at the end, you don't disembark with two hundred other travelers. You go alone.

What if it turns out that a life isn't defined by who you belong to or where you came from, by what you wished for or whom you lost, but instead by the moments you spend getting from each of these places to the next? p 418

If I hadn't left at that moment, I knew I would have stayed forever.

Now I know: adulthood is a line drawn in the sand. At some point, your child will be standing on the other side.

if you spend too much time living in the past, you never move forward.

Dying is a misnomer. You're alive, until you're not.