I stare out the window and reflect on the similarity between writing and saving a life and the inevitable failure of one's imagination and one's goals and ambitions to create a character or a life worth saving.
Miriam ToewsRead
There are people who are just suicidal, regardless. They are built to self-destruct. It seems, in my family, like a virus that's resistant to any kind of help or care or medication.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the inevitability of self-destructive behavior in some individuals, particularly within familial contexts.
Miriam Toews highlights the painful reality of suicide and self-destructive tendencies that can pervade families, suggesting that some individuals may be predisposed to such struggles. The metaphor of a 'virus' suggests that these issues can spread and persist despite attempts at intervention, emphasizing the complexity and difficulty in addressing deep-rooted mental health challenges within family dynamics.
In practice
In a mental health awareness seminar discussing family dynamics.
I stare out the window and reflect on the similarity between writing and saving a life and the inevitable failure of one's imagination and one's goals and ambitions to create a character or a life worth saving.
My father died beside trees on iron rails... He had 77 dollars on him at the time, and we used the money for Thai takeout because, as my friend Julie says about times like this, 'You still have to eat.'
When a person becomes a legend, the very thing that makes them human and knowable is killed off, so it's like being killed over and over and over again, for all eternity.
A writer is always, always searching, even against her will, against all her better instincts, for the thread of a story. Everything is fodder. Everything is fuel. You can feel it coming on like the tingling of a sore throat. The brain never stops struggling to reshape every experience and feeling into a coherent narrative.
Writing helps me to create order out of chaos and make sense of things. It helps me to understand what I've experienced, what I've felt and seen, so it becomes a little easier to handle. On the other hand, I don't want it to be just a cathartic experience, an outpouring of grief or whatever it is.
I had a thought, on the way home from the rock field, that the things we don't know about a person are the things that make them human, and it made me feel sad to think that, but sad in that reassuring way that some sadness has, a sadness that says welcome home in twelve different languages.
There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.
I was aware, in those early days of motherhood, that my behaviour was strange to the people who knew me well. It was as though I had been brainwashed, taken over by a cult religion. And yet this cult, motherhood, was not a place where I could actually live. Like any cult, it demanded a complete surrender of identity to belong to it.
Raising children, be aware that the piles and piles of laundry will disappear all too soon and that you will, to your surprise, miss them profoundly.
When my mother left home, her family sat shivah for her, more because my father was not Jewish than because he was black.
God blessed me with two unbelievable parents, and I am just like both of them. I have the smile and charisma of my mother and the big heart of my mom, because she wants to save the world and help the world, so I am just like her.
Each woman brings her own separate, unique strengths to the family and the Church. Being a daughter of God means that if you seek it, you can find your true identity.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.