13 Quotes by Cathy Lamb

Let's face it. you become a deeper person amidst adversity. You become a more perceptive, strong, resilient person when life is not handed to you on a silver platter held by a butler.

But grief is a walk alone. Others can be there, and listen. But you will walk alone down your own path, at your own pace, with your sheared-off pain, your raw wounds, you denial, anger, and bitter loss. You'll come to your own peace, hopefully, but it will be on your own, in your own time.

I read almost everything. Almost all genres. I read before I sleep. I read when I wake up. I read when I take a break at the bookstore. I read on Sunday afternoons. I read on Friday nights. I listen to audio books. My life is filled with words. I understand people who are addicted to books. I have found that many people use books to escape life. To battle one problem, one challenge or another. Books keep the tears at bay. They also bring on the laughs, the wonder, the education.

A child’s bond to her mother cannot be understated, and my bond with Helen was a ragged, baffling, disheartening, chaotic mess. I felt crazy, often, around my own mother. I grew up questioning what was normal, asking what reality was and wasn’t, and not trusting the outcome of different situations. She scared me and I couldn’t predict her behavior, so I was often off-kilter and worried.

I can wield any type of saw out there, and I have to do this, even if it takes me years. That I can even think in terms of a future, is a miracle. Why? Because two and a half years ago, when I was thirty-two years old, I had a heart attack. I used to be the size of a small, depressed cow. The heart attack led to my stomach strangling operation, and I lost 170 pounds. Now I am less than half myself, in more ways than one.

Sisters are the worst. And they are the best. A sister can be awful and complicated and loving and protective and petty and competitive, and when you die she is the person you want beside you holding your hand. Somebody’s gotta organize the potluck after the service and you know your husband’s not gonna be up to the job.

When moonlight touches you, it’s time for a woman to sit back and think, really think, about her life.

She was in that place in your soul where friends go who die but you still love them and talk to them and think of them.

If Christ had wanted us to wallow in regret, he would have said so. If Christ had wanted us to let guilt rule our past and future, he would have told us. He did not.” Father Mike clasped my hands again. “If Christ felt we were unforgiveable, he would not have offered forgiveness. God would not have sacrificed his son for us.