Favourite Quotes - Part 3

[Sceal]

"Maybe the most difficult stranger to welcome is the one who lives inside."

       ~ Mirabai Starr ~

Ooh, I really like this one WG!

[bogan]

Dont bother losing  weight,   just get fatter friends.    fits every part of my life it means to change who you compare youself to

[woodsgnome]

"A centerpiece of healthy adulthood is having your child self intact and alive and something to be proud of." ~ Maurice Sendak

Rings true, poignant, but also confusing. The latter is for those of us whose early struggles obliterated any sense of the child self. We were too busy defending; so maybe that's the pride part--that we were able to somehow do that?

[woodsgnome]

"Peace is the way we struggle.  Peace is not the absence of the storm.  Peace is not some tranquil, idyllic place.  And peace does not keep the storm at bay.  But peace names that way we struggle with that which lies before us" ~ Jarem Sawatsky, author of Dancing with the Elephant.

I've always felt that my goal is peace. I've pictured it as something in the distant future, a someday phenomenon for when I can make it past all the cptsd roadblocks to serenity. But maybe peace is more a process than a destination, as suggested by this quote. In one sense, I'm living in peace; but life interferes, and life includes cptsd, etc. So peace is still my goal, but with a slightly different spin to what that really means.

[Elphanigh]

This is the full version of my signature.

Happiness turned to me and said - "It is time. It is time you forgive yourself for all of the things you did not become. It is time to exonerate yourself for all the people you couldn't save, and all the fragile hearts you fumbled with in the dark of your confusion. It is time to accept you don't have to be who you were a year ago. You don't have to want the same things. Above all else, it is time to believe, with reckless abandon, that you're worthy of me, for I have been waiting for years.

-bianco sparacino

[Boy22]

One of mine, from on the wall of my science class age 13.

"No one can make you feel inferior without your permission."

[woodsgnome]

A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt.

He said, 'I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.'

The grandson asked him, 'Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?'

The grandfather answered: 'The one I feed.'

                        ~              ~

While this story speaks for itself, the words "loving, compassionate" surprisingly rattled me. It's so hard to cultivate compassion for those who hurt me so badly. If I turn this to self-compassion it feels better, but when I regard the "loving compassionate" side as a whole, with even the hurt parts included, I can see it as an umbrella-like term under which I can find shelter.

It's still a paradox to have love and compassion around such deep hurt, but it's important to remember that doesn't imply tolerance or approval of what happened in any way. It only means I don't have to feed it anymore, giving it further strength.

Once the self-compassion part kicks in, the other can fade into obscurity. I visualize it as putting it all in a box, then closing it, locking the lid -- and losing the key. In its own way, that's the 'love and compassion' into which the hurt parts can settle, not forgotten but not feeding the reactions anymore. That's still hard, but worthwhile aiming for. 

[Hope67]

Hi Woodsgnome, I find what you wrote very thought-provoking and thank you for sharing it.   
Hope 

[woodsgnome]

"We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit."

~ E.E. Cummings.
He says "...we do not believe ... until ..." Seems so simple, and yet it's the biggest challenge sometimes, to find even a hint of what he says.

[woodsgnome]

Sometimes it seems like the only road we know of has disappeared, vanished. And then ...

"When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, you don't conclude that the road has vanished. And how else could we discover the stars?"

~ Nancy Willard ~

[Three Roses]

Ooooo I love that one, WG! 

[Errorzone]

"I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves."
~Friedrich Nietzsche

[woodsgnome]

"Community does not necessarily mean living face-to-face with others; rather, it means never losing the awareness that we are connected to each other."    ~~~Parker J. Palmer

While we only communicate here via posts and other resources, this quote I think summarizes well why it's still valuable to connect this way. Indeed, some of us have very few (or none!) other contacts we can trust as much as those on this forum.

[Three Roses]

 

[woodsgnome]

Former astronaut Eugene Cernak: "...there is only light if sunlight has something to shine on. When the sun shines through space, it's black. The light must have something to strike."

       

I just read this in a wonderful book by Paula D'Arcy -- Stars at Night -- When Darkness Unfolds as Light. Written as a commentary on her own grief survival story, its dark topic -- what to do, and be, after devastating personal losses -- I found highly relevant to what we discuss on this forum; our grief over our own deep losses.