Whatever happens, if you love someone and know you‘re loved back, you will always have that 📰🪖♥️

Libraries are for all readers 📚

#history #library #libraries

Real life, mercifully isn‘t a thriller. My life is nothing but small moments, and so is yours. We don‘t live in a series of plot points. We should be thankful for that. We should realize how lucky we are 🏡💻🧑‍🦼

The memories I had stored, I could not let fester. They were moments to be tended. The culture we shared was active…and I had to seize it, foster it so it did not die in me. So that I could pass it on someday. The lessons she imparted, the proof of her life lived on in me, in my every move and deed. I was what she left behind. If I could not be with my mother, I would be her 🍜🥟🍵

Past is past…no it‘s not! People are always fond of saying that, but what‘s past is never past; not entirely 🕰🚙

Some things you can‘t fix; some things you just have to carry 💔

It didn‘t take long to understand that there was no recipe or equation. Parenting was a river of moment-by-moment decisions, intuitions, a balancing of one‘s own needs, which did factor somehow, with those of the child. But mostly it was being there, truly there, with all your senses. Trusting the heart knowledge that arises with full attention. Lorrie had that. She had a gift for attention of the heart 🤰💛🤱

Presumably, remembered suffering never feels as bad as present suffering, even if it was really a lot worse —we can‘t remember how much worse it was, because remembering is weaker than experiencing 🕰💭

She thought that the worst part was not that Duncan had taken her heart…The worst part was that she‘d given it to him. Yes, that was always the worst part. You gave it to him. You carved out a crucial little part of yourself, and you not only gave it to him, you begged him to take it. You were sure at that moment that you would always have an endless supply, or at least more than enough. So you gave it to him 🪴🌤

Robbie wanted to make them laugh, wanted to help them see how good it was to all be together. There was too much you couldn‘t control in life, too many terrible things. They should be happy, even if only for a little while, even if just for right now 🌾

Family didn‘t mean hiding the hard stuff from each other, it meant facing it together. And it meant forgiving each other ☘️💚

…sometimes you find your way to the place that wants you most ✈️🗺

You don‘t realize how language actually interferes with communication until you don‘t have it. You have to pay much more attention to everything else when you can‘t understand words. Once comprehension comes, so much else falls away. You then rely on their words, and words aren‘t always the most reliable 🗣
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Despite everything, I believed somehow there was time. Love‘s first mistake. Perhaps love‘s only mistake 🖤⏳

It‘s hard to believe that nature can be so brutally violent 🌬🏥❄️

Like most girls my age, the sum total of my knowledge of what to do in a Manhattan bar came from watching reruns of Sex in the City 👗👠🌃

If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us, he said, then there wouldn‘t be so much fuss about love in the first place 🏙

I have hoped; I am hoping; I will hope 💙

They had taught her that family is found, that whether it be blood or circumstance or choice, what binds us does not matter. All that matters is that we are bound 🌅

I don‘t bail often, and I really wanted to like this one. But 150 pages in and it wasn‘t holding my attention, I found myself doing everything but reading 😕

Life‘s too short and there are too many books to force myself to finish the ones I‘m not enjoying.

It‘s only when you grow up that you learn you can love what‘s ugly too🪞

I want him to be joyful, loved, adored, full of everything, all the time ♥️📚💋

Every life has secrets. Every marriage certainly does. It‘s just a matter of whether you can live with them or not. 🏡🤫❤️‍🩹

…but she liked being part of an us. People thought that being one of a kind made you special. No, it just made you lonely. What was special was belonging with someone else 👩🏿‍🤝‍👩🏼

But it bothered him that he didn‘t recognize his own son, a young man halfway through high school, and it was then that Pat knew his anguish wasn‘t that he was going, but that he had already missed so much 🥃📝✈️

Maybe the world could do with more accidents 🥸

This is what it is to love a place. You have to want it to be better 📚👩‍🎓🏫

...we are more than just our genes. We are, in some way, a product of the people who surround us—the people we‘re forced to grow up with, and the people we choose to be with later. Our relationships can destroy us, but they can change us, too, and restore us, and without us ever seeing it happen, they define us 🧬🔬🖤

People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains—a cup of strong hot coffee when you‘re blue; a book to read when you‘re alone—just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness
☕️📚🌳☺️

Accurate 👌🏻

Deciding to forgive, after all, was not the same thing as forgiveness 👩🏻‍🤝‍👨🏾

I‘ve loved some very sad people in my life and hurt myself trying to get them to change. They didn‘t, and I have no business being surprised by it. People will tell you who they are. It takes an emergency for some of us to listen👂🏻🖤

And I wondered if this was the great peril of reunions: the discovery that we aren‘t as essential to other people‘s memories as they are to ours 🌾🎭✨

You can chase the truth, but who could avoid the moment of hesitation when you wonder if you really want what you‘ve been asking for? 🦋💔

Don‘t wait forever to get your shit together, all right? Life only gives you so many chances 💊👶🎶

All deserve the chance to speak and be heard and be touched. If we‘re lucky, we‘re touched at every station along the journey, and if nothing else, then at the end 🩺🏥💫

No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from 🏹🛡⚱️

Given the right circumstances, anyone was capable of anything🩸💬

🇺🇸Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature, and we responded with the best of America, with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could.

None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.🇺🇸

In wrath may you remember mercy 🏜

...so much remained of the old Bunny, the one I knew and loved. Sometimes when I saw him at a distance...I would have a strong pang of affection mixed with regret. I forgave him, a hundred times over, and never on the basis of anything more than this: a look, a gesture, a certain tilt of his head 🍂📚🥃

You can hit. Not anybody in this world can really and truly stop you if hitting is how you want to be. But if you do, you‘re risking all that love you could have. Because nobody, nobody, nobody is going to stand around all day for you to hit just hoping to give you love in return 🖤🥊

People will go to extraordinary lengths to hurt those they love; far more than they ever do for those they hate 🪢🖤

A man doesn‘t know what he thinks until a woman makes him think it 🗽

You can change the law but you can‘t change people and how they treat each other 👨🏼👨🏾‍🦱👨🏿‍🦱

Here are my most favorites reads from 2020! Although I spent more time at home than ever before, I didn‘t reach my reading goal. As thankful as I am for the ability to work from home, it means working more but from home. I also kept busy planning my 2 weddings (backyard and delayed reception) and with home renovations.

Since this is the second year I‘ve aimed for 75 books and missed, I have reduced my goal to 70 for 2021📚

Happy reading!! 🤓📖

Always remember that when a man goes out of a room, he leaves everything in it behind...when a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her 🍷

Because her parents had taught her during their flight through the mountains that humor is the soul‘s last line of defense, and as long as we‘re laughing we‘re alive 🌉

Collectively, we turned a beautiful life into the myth of a monster 🕵️‍♀️📌

But if I tell him, then we‘ll both be sad, and I want our time together to be different. I want to forget where I am and what‘s happened to my family. And when he holds me in his arms, I do forget, just for those few brief moments. Is it wrong of me to want to escape reality for a bit? 🛤

Esther craved an empty house and, more than anything, the chance to be alone with her grief 🏊🏼‍♀️

Dorcas Library in Prospect Harbor, Maine 🐳