182 Quotes by Aspen Matis

I was placeless. I carried everything on my back, exactly what I needed to survive. I didn’t know how I’d survive without this structure, silent bears and vista highs, the infinite beauty.

My body was smarter than I was. I was with someone who would never hurt me, and so I finally relaxed.

Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation.

I walked, floated, lighter—forty miles, my biggest day yet. I'd lifted the burden of guilt and shame off my body. I held my new hard-won wisdom, the gift three months of walking in the wilderness had carried me to: compassion for my younger self—forgiveness for my innocence.

In fact, because I liked him so badly, I needed to continue on my course. I was finally becoming the woman I wanted to be, and she was whom I needed to show Dash—and myself.

My mom used to tell me, “I don’t like my mother, but I love her.

The freedom of the woods lingered in me here; I felt lighter. I hoped to be changed by it, allow this seeding independence to root in my childhood Eden’s soil and grow until at last it was undeniable.

I walked home holding Tom’s hand, not letting it go even as he tottered across a soccer field where there was nothing that could hurt him.

I hated my inability to explain my life on the trail to her and my mother’s inability to comprehend. I hated her consistent need to know the list of different foods I’d eaten that day. I remembered how she’d asked me if I’d had a good dinner in the same phone call when I’d told her I’d been raped.I considered, tomorrow night, not calling her.