[given] to love
“If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you.”
—T. S. Eliot
September 2009
August 2009
“love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.”
—noelle (age 7)
“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains two descriptions: might have, and should have.”
—Louis E. Boone
“If you want your life to be a magnificent story, then begin by realizing that you are the author and everyday you have the opportunity to write a new page.”
—Mark Houlahan
reading: an unquiet mind
in the same week i discovered an old friend of mind had been suffering since college with bipolar disorder, a random stranger struck up a conversation with me about the subject at a bar. it turned out the stranger worked with sufferers of mental illnesses, particularly those with mood disorders (manic-depression, depression, etc.) and recommended this book. coincidentally, i’d already come across the book in my research and i was happy to see his enthusiasm about the book as a mental health professional.
an unquiet mind (1995) is a beautifully written and thoroughly informative autobiography about kay redfield jamison, a professor of psychiatry suffering from manic-depressive disorder. it captures the ins and outs of the disease from both a personal and clinical perspective. her story spans her predictable and quaint upbringing as a military brat through the heartbreaking turmoil she encountered with love, career, and family as she battled the disease for more than 20 years. jamison’s writing is truly poetic, adding some humanness to the monstrous disease and i found it interesting the way she structured of her storytelling; full, fast, sometimes random, the way i imagine thoughts would fly out of someone suffering from bipolar disorder.
if this sort of thing strikes your fancy as it does mine or you or someone you know if struggling with bipolar disorder, i highly recommend picking it up. it’s a great read either way.
“If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.”
—Nora Roberts
