You can be shattered and then you can put yourself back together piece by piece. But what can happen over time is this: You wake up one day and realize that you have put yourself back together completely differently. That you are whole, finally, and strong--but you...
You gotta resurrect the deep pain within you and give it a place to live that's not within your body. Let it live in art. Let it live in writing. Let it live in music. Let it be devoured by building brighter connections. Your body is not a coffin for pain to be buried...
You know, what strikes me is how desperately we all need to know that we are seen and heard. We don't need our lives to be different, or easier; we just need someone to see the pain. To know what we've faced and overcome. To say: Yes. I see this. This is real. We...
At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, was walking through a park one day in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully. Kafka told her to meet...
I think my despair is people still opt for causing pain rather than feeling it.
[Just before being released from prison...] As I stand before the door to my freedom, I realize that if I do not leave my pain, anger, and bitterness behind me, I will still be in prison.
That is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that this is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. from One Long River...
A soul that carries empathy is a soul that has survived enormous pain.
With the mistaken view of God as a Punisher-in-Chief that most Christians seem to hold, we think our own violence is necessary and even good. But there is no such thing as redemptive violence. Violence doesn’t save; it only destroys all parties in both the short and...
We all need hope. No sparkling promises or wishes. No well laid intentions or plans. Hope. Four letters. Four letters that carry the weight of our whole world and all of our life hidden in the depth of their meaning. Whether we are waiting on a check to arrive, a door...