I don't regret the painful times; I bare my scars as if they were medals.

Pain is pain. Speak up. Tell your story. (Author's Note)

The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it...I would discover that it hadn't washed me away.

The pain you may experience today does not invalidate yesterday’s healing.

The pain shown by others and later understood doesn’t hurt as deeply as the pain one feels firsthand and then witnesses.

My joy is as painful as my pain.

Pain + Reflection = Progress

May my pain remain drunk singing its own love songs

A new pain enters and the old pains of the household receive it with their silence, not with their death.

Pain has a way of making us more honest.

Let my pains remain with me.

I keep wanting to repeat over and over and over again, the pain and shock of difference, the joy of commonness, the exhilaration of meeting through incredible odds against it.

What I know about living is that the pain is never just ours. Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo, so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window, when I can see what I couldn't see before.

For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.