Now I am setting out into the unknown. It will take me a long while to work through the grief. There are no shortcuts; it has to be gone through.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the journey of dealing with grief and the necessity of facing it fully without taking shortcuts.
Madeleine L'Engle's quote expresses the idea that when one is confronted with loss or grief, they must embark on a personal journey into the unknown depths of their emotions. This process is often long and arduous, as there are no easy paths to healing; individuals must fully experience their grief rather than seeking immediate escape or shortcuts.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, this quote can highlight the importance of facing grief head-on.
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
Black Power was really a major challenge to the social privileges and structures of the kind of privilege that I had grown up with. That whole belief... that you will only be able to advance if you are perfectly behaved, if you present yourself as what white people would consider an ideal of whiteness... all of that just began to burst open.
While law-abiding Muslims are forced to hide in their homes, and animal-rights activists are labeled as terrorists for undercover filming of abusive treatment at factory farms, right-wing hate groups are free to organize, parade, arm themselves to the hilt and murder with chilling regularity. Itβs time for our society to confront this very real threat.
You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
If we are going to realise our ambition of ending the harmful practices of FGM and forced marriage, the role of young people in pushing for change is crucial. We also need to ensure that everyone, from government to civil society, is playing their part.
We think we know what it's all about; we think that disability is a really simple thing, and we don't expect to see disabled people in our daily lives.
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