Language is like a road, it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read. This narrative or temporal element has… - Rebecca Solnit

Pain serves a purpose. Without it you are in danger. What you cannot feel you cannot take care of.

When I was young, women were raped on the campus of a great university and the authorities responded by telling all the women students not to go out alone after dark or not to be out at all. Get in the house. (For women, confinement is always waiting to envelope you.) Some pranksters put up a poster announcing another remedy, that all men be excluded from campus after dark. It was an equally logical solution, but men were shocked at being asked to disappear, to lose their freedom to move and participate, all because of the violence of one man.

"A lot of people respond to almost any achievement, positive development, or outright victory with "yes but". Naysaying becomes a habit."