Night is when we are closer to ourselves, closer to essential ideas and feelings that do not register so much during daylight hours. - Clarissa Pinkola Estés

To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy.

PLEGARIA

Niégate a caer.
Si no puedes negarte a caer,
niégate permanecer en el suelo,
eleva tu corazón hacia el cielo
y, como un mendigo hambriento,
suplica que te lo llenen,
y te lo llenarán.
Puede que te empujen hacia abajo.
Puede que te impidan levantarte.
Pero nadie puede impedirte
elevar tu corazón
hacia el cielo...
sólo tu.
Es justo en medio de la desdicha
cuando muchas cosas se aclaran.
El que dice que nada bueno
se ha conseguido con ello
es que aún no está prestando atención.

"There is probably no better or more reliable measure of whether a woman has spent time in ugly duckling status at some point or all throughout her life than her inability to digest a sincere compliment. Although it could be a matter of modesty, or could be attributed to shyness- although too many serious wounds are carelessly written off as "nothing but shyness"- more often a compliment is stuttered around about because it sets up an automatic and unpleasant dialogue in the woman's mind.

If you say how lovely she is, or how beautiful her art is, or compliment anything else her soul took part in, inspired, or suffused, something in her mind says she is undeserving and you, the complimentor, are an idiot for thinking such a thing to begin with. Rather than understand that the beauty of her soul shines through when she is being herself, the woman changes the subject and effectively snatches nourishment away from the soul-self, which thrives on being acknowledged."

"I must admit, I sometimes find it useful in my practice to delineate the various typologies of personality as cats and hens and ducks and swans and so forth. If warranted, I might ask my client to assume for a moment that she is a swan who does not realzie it. Assume also for a moment that she has been brought up by or is currently surrounded by ducks.

There is nothing wrong with ducks, I assure them, or with swans. But ducks are ducks and swans are swans. Sometimes to make the point I have to move to other animal metaphors. I like to use mice. What if you were raised by the mice people? But what if you're, say, a swan. Swans and mice hate each other's food for the most part. They each think the other smells funny. They are not interested in spending time together, and if they did, one would be constantly harassing the other.

But what if you, being a swan, had to pretend you were a mouse? What if you had to pretend to be gray and furry and tiny? What you had no long snaky tail to carry in the air on tai