(Un) Resilience - Elizabeth Edwards

p.12 Just as the words traitor and Juads became synonymous, thre was a time when Ananias and liar were near sysnonyms, too. In the Acts of the Apostles, Ananais lied to Jesus about his money so he would not have to give as much to the church.

p.16 In song, as in Hnry Jame's novels, faults all turned out to b evirtues, as if written by Sammy Cahm: I'm irresponsibly mad for you. I had, I have to saym a long, log way t ofall when the fal fainally came.


p.26 And the home they talked about was the home they left--left when they had twp legs .. left before the images of war that would scar the places where the doctors couldn't reach. That's the home they craved. The one before.

p.30 I know, as these wives know, that wishing will not return life to "before." "Before" is forever gone.
But we cannot, they cannot turn back. This is the life we have now, and the only way to find peace, the only way to be resilient when thes landmies explode beneath your foundation, is first to accept that there is a new reality. The life the arrmy wife knew before her husband went to war, the life of the patient before the word "terminal" was said aloud... these lives no longer exist and the more we cling to the hope that these old lives might come back, the more we set ourselves up for unending discontent.
Each time I fell into a chasm--...--I had to accept that the planet had taken a few turns and I couold not turn it back. My life was and would akwats be different, and it would be less than I hoped it would be. Rach time, there was a new life, a new story.... In time, I learned that I was starting a new story. I write these words as if that is the beginning and end of waht I did, but it is onlya small slice of the middle, a place that is hard to reach and, in reaching it, only a steppnig-off place for finding or creating a new life with our new ewality.

(unfinished p.34 - 162)

p.169 "I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to spread your arms out and fall back into the pillow of all pthe people who have loved you."

p.179 I never need flowers or jewelry, I don't care about vacations or a nice car. But I need you to be faithful. Leave me, if you must, but be faithful to me if you are with me.

p.192
And even before learning of a single night, I felt vulnerable to humiliation. Because of the fish-eye lens through which we all see someone in the news--the lens that makes some traits seem bigger and some seen smaller--people had too high an opinion of me, and I knew I had no chance of meeting their expectations.

p.205 The past is not what he wishes it was, but that does not mean he cannot create for himself the future he wants.

p.213 "The modern hero is a person who does something everyone thinks they could do if they were a little srtonger, a little faster, a little smarter, or a little more generous. Heroes in anceint time were the link between man and perfect beings, gods. Heroes in moder n times are the link between man as he is and man as he could be."...
...she stood in the storm, and when the wind did not low her way--and it surely has not, --she adjusted her sails.