You see it is important to understand how damaged people don’t always know how to say yes, or to choose the big thing, even when it is right in front of them. It’s a shame we carry. The shame of wanting something good. The shame of feeling something good. The shame of not believing we deserve to stand in the same room in the same way as all those we admire. Big red As on our chests. I never thought to myself growing up, be a lawyer. An astronaut. The President. A scientist. A doctor. An architect. I didn’t even think, be a writer. Aspiration gets stuck in some people. It’s difficult to think yes. Or up. When all you feel is fight or run. If I could go back, I’d coach myself. I’d be the woman who taught me how to stand up, how to want things, how to ask for them. I’d be the woman who says, “your mind, your imagination, they are everything. Look how beautiful. You deserve to sit at the table. The radiance falls on all of us.

“When I stand alone with the earth and sky a feeling of something in me going off in every direction into the unknown of infinity means more to me than any thing…”

“Stop worrying about your identity and concern yourself with the people you care about, ideas that matter to you, beliefs you can stand by, tickets you can run on. Intelligent humans make those choices with their brain and hearts and they make them alone. The world does not deliver meaning to you. You have to make it meaningful… and decide what you want and need and must do.”

“But beyond self-care and the ability to (really) listen, the practice of doing nothing has something broader to offer us: an antidote to the rhetoric of growth. In the context of health and ecology, things that grow unchecked are often considered parasitic or cancerous. Yet we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and the regenerative.”

“I love the word tender. I think it’s one of my favorite words. I think what I think of tenderness, I do think of an available softness. Maybe vulnerability is another word for it, but I love the word tender. It does imply touch. That there’s a risk involved in something like that. I love that the word is kind of complicated. A tender is one who tends, the way you tend a garden. A tender of a garden. Tender is also an exchange, like legal tender. This word has all these layers and one of them is softness.”

“It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which I would like to function.”

“My advice to anyone who feels deeply tired is the same advice that I give to myself: “Take time.” Take time to pause. Take time to breathe. Take time to lie down and relax and enjoy some precious moments of silence to give your exhausted senses some of their much-needed rest. Take time to meditate. Take time to be alone in nature and watch the clouds move and change in color while being surrounded by trees. Take time to go on adventures. Take time to try new food, to try new places and to try new ways of doing things because what seems strange and weird at first can sometimes be an amazing thing for the soul that craves some originality and authenticity which is why it is also essential to take time to read. Take time to completely lose yourself inside the world of a novel and perhaps find an interesting perspective in life that a certain character in that book truly believes in and maybe it can help you feel more understood and less alone as you then finally take your time to imagine. Take time to imagine, visualize, and project that future that you truly want and list down the ideas, concepts, and plans that flow in your mind, which may help turn your dreams into reality.”

I don’t know how & something very large in me does not Want to know how To say the right thing To say anything at all It just wants sobbing It wants the true feeling It wants the fall

You need a rest. You need empty moments in which you tolerate your anxiety and circling thoughts until they slow down and stop circling. You need slow, quiet activities that ground you and remind you to accept yourself in spite of huge obstacles and bad thoughts. You need to put solutions out of your mind for now, and engage in activities that have nothing to do with your ego. You need habits that strengthen your patience and focus, but also feel real and not arbitrary. You need to abandon your glorious future and build your imperfect present instead.