Chronic Illness Quotes

Listen, I wanted to say, I don't need your judgment, okay? I have enough to deal with without you contributing, so can we just get on with this so I can get out of here?
But I couldn't form the words. Dr. Johnson viewed me as a child, and somehow, under his contemptuous gaze, I had regressed to one. I was frightened and shy, and it was all I could do to answer his questions and count the seconds until the end of the visit. ~ Jessica Verdi

To think how different ones life would be had one moment not altered it all - just don't sit there too long or you'll self sabotage all your growth. ~ Nikki Rowe

If I only could explain
How much I miss
that precious moment
when I was free
from the shackles of chronic pain. ~ Jenni Johanna Toivonen

And the deal with so many chronic illnesses is that most people won't want to believe you. They will tell you that you look great, that it might be in your head only, that it is likely stress, that everything is okay. None of these are the right things to say to someone whose entire existence is a fairly consistent torture of the body and mind. They say it because they are well-intentioned usually, because they wish you the best, but they also say it because you make them uncomfortable. Your existence is evidence of death. . . . ~ Porochista Khakpour

What if...the doctors couldn't find anything wrong? What if I was over-exaggerating the pain, weakness, and weird sensations? ~ Jennifer Starzec

I think many people with a chronic illness would prefer not to have their chronic illness, simply because it's high maintenance. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Appearing nude on film was not easy when I was twenty-six in Body Heat; it was even harder when I was forty-six in The Graduate, on the stage, which is more up close and personal than film. After my middle-age nude scene, though, I unexpectedly got letters from women saying, "I have not undressed in front of my husband in ten years and I'm going to tonight." Or, "I have not looked in the mirror at my body and you gave me permission."
These affirmations from other women were especially touching to me because when I began The Graduate I'd just come through a period when I felt a great loss of confidence, when my rheumatoid arthritis hit me hard and I literally couldn't walk or do any of the things that I was so used to doing. It used to be that if I said to my body, "Leap across the room now," it would leap instantly. I don't know how I did it, but I did it. I hadn't realized how much my confidence was based on my physicality. On my ability to make my body do whatever I wanted it to do.
I was so consumed, not just by thinking about what I could and couldn't do, but also by handling the pain, the continual, chronic pain. I didn't realize how pain colored my whole world and how depressive it was. Before I was finally able to control my RA with proper medications, I truly had thought that my attractiveness and my ability to be attractive to men was gone, was lost. So for me to come back and do The Graduate was an affirmation to myself. I had my body back. I was back. ~ Kathleen Turner

And now he had acquired the wisdom to admit that sometimes experienced his disdain for "weak, sick people" because he was frightened by any suggestion he could ever become that. ~ James C. Coyne

So often we think that the truth is a static entity that exists only in a singular place--a place that we have to find. But I have come to realize that the answers I have been looking for, the truth of my own body, was ever-changing. ~ Abby Norman

The strong, ferocious wind just made the chill worse, and as it blew around me, electric bursts of pain shot through my body. ~ Jennifer Starzec

I'm tired of having to struggle for what seems to come easily to everyone else. ~ Mercedes Lackey

They have been deprived nutritionally, or some illness has not been picked up, or they have not been screened for vision or hearing defects, or they have not had some kind of a chronic illness or error of metabolism picked up. ~ C. Everett Koop

Nothing worked. This blazing pain seemed only to be getting worse. ~ Jennifer Starzec

Because the truth was I was tired. I was tired of fighting but more importantly I was tired of losing, of being disappointed. ~ Laekan Zea Kemp

Depression affects almost 80% of migraine sufferers at one time or another. People with migraine, especially chronic migraine, also are more likely to experience intense anxiety and to have suicidal tendencies. If we want to live happy and joyful lives with migraine, it is vital that we acknowledge and deal with the emotional realities of the disease. ~ Sarah Hackley

You spend a lot of time thinking about how awful the prison is rather than envisioning your future. ~ Piper Kernan

Ache my bones, flame my muscles, tingle my nerves, but you will never taint my beautiful mind & I will overcome this condition with the belief that I already have.
- CRPS AWARENESS - ~ Nikki Rowe

Mental illness

People assume you aren't sick
unless they see the sickness on your skin
like scars forming a map of all the ways you're hurting.

My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s
Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better?
Have you tried not being sad, not being sick?
Have you tried being more like me?
Have you tried shutting up?

Yes, I have tried. Yes, I am still trying,
and yes, I am still sick.

Sometimes monsters are invisible, and
sometimes demons attack you from the inside.
Just because you cannot see the claws and the teeth
does not mean they aren't ripping through me.
Pain does not need to be seen to be felt.

Telling me there is no problem
won't solve the problem.

This is not how miracles are born.
This is not how sickness works. ~ Emm Roy

As I sat up I turned my head to the side, but immediately straightened it again when I felt a sharp pain shoot through my neck. ~ Jennifer Starzec

Within that tired body, lies a soul so persistent in love, repentant in serving others before yourself. I see the person who can sympathize all layers of the human experience. I see you. ~ Karen A. Baquiran

ME/CFS has a greater negative impact on functional status and well-being than other chronic diseases, e.g., cancer or lung diseases[8], and is associated with a drastic decrement in physical functioning[9]. In a comparison study[10] ME/CFS patients scored significantly lower than patients with hypertension, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and multiple sclerosis (MS), on all of the eight Short Form Health Survey (SF-36)[11] subscales. As compared to patients with depression, ME/CFS patients scored significantly lower on all the scales, except for scales measuring mental health and role disability due to emotional problems, on which they scored significantly higher. ~ Frank Twisk

Processed foods cause inflammation, a source of most chronic illnesses as well as stress. ~ Kris Carr

In the car inching its way down Fifth Avenue, toward Bergdorf Goodman and this glamorous party, I looked back on my past with a new understanding. This sickness, the "endo-whatever," had stained so much - my sense of self, my womanhood, my marriage, my ability to be present. I had effectively missed one week of each month every year of my life since I was thirteen, because of the chronic pain and hormonal fluctuations I suffered during my period. I had lain in bed, with heating pads and hot-water bottles, using acupuncture, drinking teas, taking various pain medications and suffering the collateral effects of them. I thought of all the many tests I missed in various classes throughout my education, the school dances, the jobs I knew I couldn't take as a model, because of the bleeding and bloating as well as the pain (especially the bathing suit and lingerie shoots, which paid the most). How many family occasions was I absent from? How many second or third dates did I not go on? How many times had I not been able to be there for others or for myself? How many of my reactions to stress or emotional strife had been colored through the lens of chronic pain? My sense of self was defined by this handicap. The impediment of expected pain would shackle my days and any plans I made.

I did not see my own womanhood as something positive or to be celebrated, but as a curse that I had to constantly make room for and muddle through. Like the scar on my arm, my reproductive syst ~ Padma Lakshmi

Self-care has become a new priority – the revelation that it's perfectly permissible to listen to your body and do what it needs. ~ Frances Ryan

I am a person suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and I am appalled that it has been given such a trivial name.

Here is a disease that totally disables most of its victims; a disease that causes balance disorders, resulting in some of us requiring wheelchairs, cognitive disorders that leave us unable to perform formerly simple mental tasks, and immune disorders that lay us open to multiple infections and to autoimmune problems.

And all the medical profession can come up with to define this syndrome to the general population is "fatigue! ~ Jane Cuozzo

The core belief in having to be strong enough, characteristic of many people who develop chronic illness, is a defence. The child who perceives that her parents cannot support her emotionally had better develop an attitude of "I can handle everything myself." Otherwise, she may feel rejected. One way not to feel rejected is never to ask for help, never to admit "weakness" - to believe that I am strong enough to withstand all my vicissitudes alone. ~ Gabor Mate

And all my ethical reasoning crumbles to ash in the sheer fact of his presence. Because together, even in darkness, we light up a room; because the clotted guilt inside me breaks up and disperses before a surge of stupid happiness; because I love him, and I know I cannot leave him, am incapable of leaving him, unless he asks me to go. And he has not asked me. And that is the miracle which I live with, every day. ~ Anna Lyndsey

Miraculously recover or die. That's the extent of our cultural bandwidth for chronic illness. ~ S. Kelley Harrell

Behind every stressful thought is the desire for things to be other than they are. ~ Toni Bernhard

It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of ... it's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility, and it can really mess up your life.
[Author Hilary Mantel on being asked about being a writer with endometriosis, Nov 2012 NPR interview] ~ Hilary Mantel

I am disabled
but I'm not my disability.
Disability is just
a little piece
of me but
it is not
my whole personality ~ Jenni Johanna Toivonen

Most people live in fear of some terrible event changing their lives, the death of a loved one or a serious illness. For the chronically ill, this terrible event has already happened, and we have been let in on an amazing secret: You survive. You adapt, and your life changes, but in the end you go on, with whatever compromises you have been forced to make, whatever losses you have been forced to endure. You learn to balance your fears with the simple truth that you must go on living. ~ Jamie Weisman

AIDS today is not a death sentence. It can be treated as a chronic illness, or a chronic disease. ~ Yusuf Hamied

That is what chronic illness is . . . a disconnect between what our souls can do and what our bodies can do. ~ Barbara Lieberman

Psychologisation describes the emphasis on psychological factors where there is little or no evidence to justify it (1). It's a process where relevant findings are ignored or downplayed in favour of data from incomplete examinations, flawed research or anecdotal reports.
In a clinical context, differential diagnoses may be dismissed prematurely while psychological explanations are readily accepted.
Psychologisation does not refer to situations where there is sound evidence that psychological factors play a significant role, or where all the arguments are discussed and the psychological explanations are deemed the most persuasive. ~ Ellen Goudsmit

We'll be fighting [Transverse Myelitis] our whole lives, but we've also proven that we are more than capable of not letting it beat us. ~ Jennifer Starzec

I waited for years for my infatuation to blow over, managing it like a chronic illness. But suppression only sustains and intensifies passion instead of letting it peter out into domesticity, the way the narrow glass canyons of Manhattan Venturi the winds to a pitch that rips umbrellas inside out. Kati Jo used to say she wished Lauren and I could just fuck so I'd get it out of my system, but I never wanted anything as feasible as an affair. I never imagined that Lauren might leave her husband, or entertained shameful little daydreams about his death. The only scenario I could plausibly picture that would bring us together was not Lars's death but my own. I would contract some painless terminal illness that would entitle me to ask Lauren to sit at my bedside in my last months and read to me or bring me little sandwiches. I couldn't envision any realistic way of changing this world; what I wanted was to live in a different one. I was never really a reformer, but a utopian. ~ Tim Kreider

In the midst of pain, we begin to understand the price Jesus paid for our salvation. ~ Cindee Snider Re

If you tell someone you have depression, they will often say, "Oh, I've been depressed before, too." The difference lies between being depressed and having depression. Everyone's been depressed at one time or another, but these are far from being the same things. One is a passing mood. The other is a chronic illness that does not come and go, ebb and flow, is here one day and gone the next.

The difference between being depressed and having depression is that one is a mood and the other is an illness. One is a momentary bout of melancholy. The other is a debilitating condition that requires medical treatment. Would you feel better about having a cancerous lesion if I likened it to the rash I had last week?

The difference between being depressed and having depression is the difference between a mood that will soon pass, and a serious illness that disrupts your ability to function and will take years to treat. The difference between being depressed and having depression is the difference between Cleveland and Bangkok, or your frying pan and the surface of the sun.

So, no, we (depressives) do not feel better when you tell us about your rash. We'll do our best to be polite about it, but no, it really doesn't help at all. ~ Northern Adams

The food you eat is among the most significant factors affecting your genes and pushing them toward cancer by causing mutation or disruption in their function. That is, what you eat can either prevent cancer and other chronic illnesses or help cause them. ~ Dharma Singh Khalsa

I learned the hard way how desperately primitive is the technology we have for monitoring the health of someone with a chronic illness. ~ Chris Toumazou

He mistook my frustration for anger towards him, which seemed to be typical for us lately. The longer the distance between a correct diagnosis, the greater the silence we shared. ~ Tracey Berkowitz

We know that no algorithm can solve global poverty; no pill can cure a chronic illness; no box of chocolates can mend a broken relationship; no educational DVD can transform a child into a baby Einstein; no drone strike can end a terrorist conflict. Sadly, there is no such thing as 'One Tip to a Flat Stomach.' ~ Carl Honore

Before I knew it, I was once again being whisked down the hallways at the new hospital into an even bigger room, one that, unbeknownst to me, would be my home for what would feel like a long, long time. ~ Jennifer Starzec

Happiness will be fleeting if you constantly search for it in places that can be taken away. It's an inside job. ~ Nikki Rowe

They entered the summer parlor, where the Ravenels chatted amiably with his sisters, Phoebe and Seraphina.
Phoebe, the oldest of the Challon siblings, had inherited their mother's warm and deeply loving nature, and their father's acerbic wit. Five years ago she had married her childhood sweetheart, Henry, Lord Clare, who had suffered from a chronic illness for most of his life. The worsening symptoms had gradually reduced him to a shadow of the man he'd once been, and he'd finally succumbed while Phoebe was pregnant with their second child. Although the first year of mourning was over, Phoebe hadn't yet returned to her former self. She went outdoors so seldom that her freckles had vanished, and she looked wan and thin. The ghost of grief still lingered in her gaze.
Their younger sister, Seraphina, an effervescent eighteen-year-old with strawberry-blonde hair, was talking to Cassandra. Although Seraphina was old enough to have come out in society by now, the duke and duchess had persuaded her to wait another year. A girl with her sweet nature, her beauty, and her mammoth dowry would be targeted by every eligible man in Europe and beyond. For Seraphina, the London Season would be a gauntlet, and the more prepared she was, the better. ~ Lisa Kleypas

You know what will be fun?"
"What?"
"When we can stop pretending that we're interesting people who go out and do things and instead we can hang out and just do nothing."
It's incredible to hear those words out of someone's mouth besides mine. Not that I've ever said them, actually. Who would I say them to?
"That sounds amazing," I say. ~ Hannah Moskowitz

My handbag turned into a diaper bag for the chronically ill. ~ Tracey Berkowitz

I could feel the bite of the autumn air, warning us all of the harsh winter that was on its way. ~ Jennifer Starzec

Chronic illness, with its invisible symptoms of fatigue and pain, is largely the burden of women. And it's worth considering to what extent its relative neglect by the medical system is because it mostly affects women, whose complaints are so often heard not as a roar but as a whine. ~ Maya Dusenbery

I'm really tired", you come to understand, is meaningless, giving the impression all will be well with a good rest and that if you've ever been tired, you know what it is to be exhausted. ~ Frances Ryan

Chronic illness is hard. Pain is hard. Isolation is hard. The financial cost is hard. Grieving is hard and necessary and sometimes takes far longer than we every imagined. ~ Cindee Snider Re

The fork is your most powerful tool to change your health and the planet; food is the most powerful medicine to heal chronic illness. ~ Mark Hyman, M.D.

Physically, mentally, emotionally
it seems like every part of me is broken in one way or another. ~ Patrick Carman

I guess it's human nature to question yourself, to question why all the pain has had to happen? sometimes there isn't any answers it just is what it is and how we make ourselves feel and see through that, is what will determine how we move forward. ~ Nikki Rowe

It's been an incredible odyssey to make the journey from a vibrantly healthy person to someone with a chronic illness. ~ Karen Duffy

He said that my problem was that I was perfectly healthy and had the illusion that I would be able bodied forever. I could only begin understanding his problem if I gave up that illusion and that would be very difficult, given how healthy I was. I understand, I mistakenly said, and he said no you don't. ~ James C. Coyne

No matter what stage of illness we are in, whether we've just been diagnosed or we have lived with chronic migraines for decades, there are adjustments we can make to increase joy in our lives and to live more fully. ~ Sarah Hackley

The increasing fascination with and funding of genetic technology is simply another medical dead end, another reductionist rabbit hole that will lead us no further toward preventing and reversing chronic illness. ~ T. Colin Campbell

Mark Vink is a not a typical ME/CFS patient. He is severely ill. It takes him twelve hours to recover from a walk from his bed to the bathroom. While he's not typical he may not be that uncommon, though. Some estimates suggest that about 25% of ME/CFS patients are home bound or bedridden. Few ever make it into research studies. ~ Cort Johnson

An hour seldom passed in which she didn't either sneeze, pick her nose, or wipe a bogie onto her snot-encrusted sleeve. But she had such a lovely colour. That pink glow which comes with the flu used to engulf her like an aura. It suited her. She always looked so damn effervescent. ~ Joss Sheldon

I started feeling afraid of my own body, like it was a torture chamber I'd been trapped inside. ~ Talia Hibbert

Having a chronic illness, Molly thought, was like being invaded. Her grandmother back in Michigan used to tell about the day one of their cows got loose and wandered into the parlor, and the awful time they had getting her out. That was exactly what Molly's arthritis was like: as if some big old cow had got into her house and wouldn't go away. It just sat there, taking up space in her life and making everything more difficult, mooing loudly from time to time and making cow pies, and all she could do really was edge around it and put up with it.

When other people first became aware of the cow, they expressed concern and anxiety. They suggested strategies for getting the animal out of Molly's parlor: remedies and doctors and procedures, some mainstream and some New Age. They related anecdotes of friends who had removed their own cows in one way or another. But after a while they had exhausted their suggestions. Then they usually began to pretend that the cow wasn't there, and they preferred for Molly to go along with the pretense. ~ Alison Lurie

As with many life-altering events, an autoimmune illness is almost guaranteed to cause you to re-evaluate your priorities. ~ Joan Friedlander

The Sick Woman begins to see that life is wilder, more chaotic, harsher and more loving, paradoxical, and downright strange than she was ever taught. She discovers for herself the power of moon and the tides, the shifting of the stars and the seasons, the haze of pollen and shift in air pressure and how they impact her dreams, her moods, her body processes. She learns that she is not an independent automaton but a wild being woven of life and death, a chaos of magic, not a machine of logic. She learns that the outer impacts the inner in myriad ways. And vice versa. She learns that she is simultaneously weaker and yet more powerful than she ever knew. She is dangerous with this knowledge which does not appear in the medical books and bibles except as anomalies. She's singing from the wrong hymn sheet and messing up the patina of perfection that the patriarchy is aiming for. In a display of a million marching soldiers with polished boots, gleaming medals and straight legs, there is the sick woman, bare breasted, hair loose, scars showing, shameless, dancing to her own tune. ~ Lucy H. Pearce

When we make decisions that honor our dreams and priorities, we also make choices about what we won't prioritize. We must embrace these choices as well. ~ Sarah Hackley

I will be living with chronic pain for the rest of my life. I don't have the mobility, energy or life options I used to have. I work hard to manage the pain, and I want the medical system to be a respectful and effective partner, not a jailer. The opioid crisis is not my doing. ~ Sonya Huber

All parents set out with expectations, hopes and dreams for their child. When a child is diagnosed with a health problem, these aspirations are altered. While one parent is hoping to see their child graduate from university, another is praying that they can live pain free ~ Sharon Dempsey

I hope in the next world I shall be at ease, but in this I find I must not expect it long together. ~ Anne Somerset

I hated that the greatest enemy of my lifetime... was also my truest love. ~ Bailey Vincent

Chronic illness is not caused by a bad gene, or a Gypsy curse, nor is it a function of aging. Chronic disease is caused by chronic nutrient deficiencies. ~ Peter Glidden

The Spoon Theory was created by a friend of mine, Christine Miserandino, to explain the limits you have when you live with chronic illness. ~ Jenny Lawson

I wanted to relay a first hand experience to an audience possibly struggling to understand just what living with an autoimmune condition means," Connery says. "It's a difficult journey and very much misunderstood by our friends and family – I hope this book can help to change that. ~ Richard Connery

The challenges I have faced - among them material poverty, chronic illness, and being raised by a single mother - are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

Living in the past is like choosing to cling to a chronic illness. ~ Asa Don Brown

No one knows our bodies or our subjective experiences like we do. This means we can rest secure in our knowledge of ourselves and what we're going through, even when the medical profession doesn't understand or believe us. Migraine is a weird and changing disease. It affects all of us differently, and every attack is a little different than the one before. This means that no one can understand your life, symptoms, or illness like you can. This can be incredibly empowering: you are the expert. But, it also carries great responsibility: to live as happily and as fully as possible, you must listen to your body and trust your instincts. ~ Sarah Hackley

If I had to pull an all-nighter studying for a test or too many looming deadlines had me pulling out my hair, I wouldn't end up with just some trendy coffee addiction. I'd end up in a mini-coma, face down in the middle of the studio or on the floor of the community showers. ~ Laekan Zea Kemp

It got worse still as time went on because people did not sympathize with you any more. They couldn't do enough for you at first, and that helped, and then they got bored with your troubles. But your troubles went on just the same and you had to bear them alone. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

Surrender is an incredibly difficult topic in light of chronic illness, because loss is often continued and sustained. ~ Cindee Snider Re

Not that he had come anywhere near attaining her skill at managing hope. She could balance it like a juggler -- let it soar and curb it and pass it from hand to hand. She could spin hope and spin herself through it. Forget mere juggling; she was a veritable trapeze artist with this hope thing. ~ Sonali Dev

I felt an attack of my most chronic illness - the pain of missing out. ~ Steve Toltz

No one in our society needs to be told that exercise is good for us. Whether you are overweight or have a chronic illness or are a slim couch potato, you've probably heard or read this dictum countless times throughout your life. But has anyone told you-indeed, guaranteed you-that regular physical activity will make you happier? I swear by it. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

Trying is an art even when you try and fail every time you get up and keep going. When you stop dreaming and fight for what you want and what is necessary that's when the real change and growth begins. ~ Keah Brown

Somewhere inside that hurting body, there is something better, something stronger, something real. ~ R. M. Drake

Eighteen months ago, after seeing thirteen different doctors and undergoing multiple tests and investigations, not only was I given a diagnosis of a condition that I didn't know about or understand, it was an illness I didn't believe in. ~ Nina Muirhead

Power is tricky to navigate; to understand it you have to lay the groundwork for what makes you powerful in the first place. ~ Keah Brown

Stop mansplaining menstrution, we've got this. ~ Silvia Young

Disabled, in the eyes of many is a dirty word because it shines a light on the differences of our world, and when we acknowledge difference, we must acknowledge privilege - and that opens a whole other can of worms. ~ Keah Brown

It is my belief that sometimes we keep secrets and our deepest insecurities because we believe that if other people found them out they would agree and believe them to be true, too. ~ Keah Brown

Self-stigma can be just a big a problem as the negative attitudes of others. ~ Megan A. Arroll

It is no coincidence then that doctors and patients and the entire Lyme community report - anecdotally, of course, as there is still a frustrating scarcity of good data on anything Lyme-related - that women suffer the most from Lyme. They tend to advance into chronic and late-stage forms of the illness most because often it's checked for last, as doctors often treat them as psychiatric cases first. The nebulous symptoms plus the fracturing of articulacy and cognitive fog can cause any Lyme patient to simply appear mentally ill and mentally ill only. This is why we hear that young women - again, anecdotally - are dying of Lyme the fastest. This is also why we hear that chronic illness is a women's burden. Women simply aren't allowed to be physically sick until they are mentally sick, too, and then it is by some miracle or accident that the two can be separated for proper diagnosis. In the end, every Lyme patient has some psychiatric diagnosis, too, if anything because of the hell it takes getting to a diagnosis. ~ Porochista Khakpour

Even the littlest things were now a challenge, one I didn't understand. ~ Sarah Todd Hammer

I know that I'm not the only one who struggles with feelings of self-pity. How many thousands of others are sidelined by the debilitating effects of Lyme disease? Multitudes hover on sofas and beds like me, too drained to do anything more than just the bare necessities of daily functioning. In fact, some can't even do that. Anyone living with chronic illness that imposes severe limitations must experience similar feelings of disappointment, frustration, fear, sadness, and envy. I am not alone. ~ Katina Makris

People who don't see you every day have a hard time understanding how on some days--good days--you can run three miles, but can barely walk across the parking lot on other days,' [my mom] said quietly. ~ Jennifer Starzec

I wondered if there was anything [the doctor] could do to to make the pain disappear and my arms work again. I wondered if I was going to get any worse than I already was. If so, I wondered if he could fix that, too. ~ Jennifer Starzec

Futility. Uselessness. Bloody entrophy. Death matters, at least sometimes. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Let us be today's Christians. Let us not take fright at the boldness of today's church. With Christ's light let us illuminate even the most hideous caverns of the human person: torture, jail, plunder, want, chronic illness. The oppressed must be saved, not with a revolutionary salvation, in mere human fashion, but with the holy revolution of the Son of Man, who dies on the cross to cleanse God's image, which is soiled in today's humanity, a humanity so enslaved, so selfish, so sinful. ~ Oscar A. Romero

My lip trembled, my throat raw, and I started to cry. But not because I didn't look perfect. But because I looked healthy and because I wasn't sure how long I'd stay that way. ~ Laekan Zea Kemp

The books my mother read and reread provided a broader, more adventurous world, and escape from the confines of her chronic illness. Her interior life was enriched even as her physical life contracted. If she couldn't change the reality of her situation, she could change her perception of it. She could enter into the lives of the characters in her books, sharing their journeys while she remained seated in her chair. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

By staying, by shirking the responsibility and effort of leaving, by continuing to occupy this lovely man while giving him neither children nor a public companion nor a welcoming home-do I do wrong? ~ Anna Lyndsey