“Honestly once you realize you’re not in trouble all the time and really no one has power over you, the second half of life begins.” ⁂

WarPaintJournal: “One day my mother casually said, ‘we never worried about you, you always knew how to take care of yourself.’ And it broke something quietly inside me. Because what sounds like pride also feels like loneliness. It means no one ever really looked too closely, no one wondered if the strong one was tired. It means I learned to carry the weight so well that no one thought to help me set it down. And maybe that’s the silent cost of being ‘capable’, you stop being seen as someone who also needs softness. You become the safe place for everyone but never quite have one of your own. And in that moment, I realized strength had been my survival, but it had also been my isolation.” (continued)

Jay LeSoleil: “You feel depressed and crazy because in every historical human culture known to anthropology, people sang together, danced together, and ate food together, and you don’t sing and you don’t dance and you eat alone in the dark…. ⁂

Jeff Tweedy: “You just gotta keep making s–t up, scribbling–like sitting down and drawing with my kids. It reminds me to do that in my songs. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad. I think it looks great. Let’s hang it on the refrigerator.” ⁂

Sydney Smith, letter to Sarah Austin, July 1836: “Very high and very low temperature extinguishes all human sympathy and relations. It is impossible to feel affection beyond 78° or below 20° of Fahrenheit; human nature is too solid or too liquid beyond these limits. Man only lives to shiver or to perspire. God send that the glass may fall, and restore me to my regard for you, which in the temperate zone is invariable.” (continued)

calliopechild: We all like to think we can handle change gracefully, and then someone rearranges our grocery store. ⁂