Between the chaos of my summer with teen kids, and now the plumes of smoke clouding Denver’s skies, it’s been weeks since I have had a critical mass of coherent thoughts to string together into a blog post. But here, for your inspiration, are quotes I’ve collected that remind me why I invite people into the hard work of looking back at their lives.
To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.”
~James Baldwin
I’m working on my own life story. I don’t mean I’m putting it together; no, I’m taking it apart.
~Margaret Atwood
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
~Steve Jobs
“Finding yourself” is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. “Finding yourself” is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.
~Emily McDowell
