Turn the dirt to flowers, birthday girl
38 answers in the pages to mark another year
I’m celebrating my birthday this week and at the start of the month, while folding laundry, a little creative spark went off in my brain. I’m giving credit to The Artist’s Way task of “repot any pinched and languishing plants” that I completed that morning. (It also nicely fits with the song paired with this send - give it a listen below, synchronicity at work!) And so now, a conversation in my head:
Maybe I should do a bonus newsletter send for my birthday!
Yes, my brain responded, a list of 38 passages of wisdom, lessons, truths, answers.
Ha! As though I could say with authority a list that long—but wait, you know the whole essence of your very being, the newsletter… the answers are in the pages.
So if you every wondered how my brain works, there you go. To compile the list, I looked through past reading journals. My tracking has transformed throughout the years, across physical notebooks, Google docs and apps. It felt like an appropriate exercise heading into birthday celebrations, remembering what was going on in my life at the time I was reading a particular book. I hope this list inspires you to pick up one of these or makes you think about memorable books from your reading life.
And now, in no particular order, a list of 38 answers I’ve found in the pages:
Answers in reading, books and libraries:
“Ask me for my biography and I will tell you the books I have read.” Rules for Visiting, Jessica Francis Kane
“Reading forces you to be quiet in a world that no longer makes place for that.” The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green
“Books were my armor. Everything I’d ever learned growing up, all my thoughts, dreams, goals, experiences, it all came from the books I read. It was like I went around collecting knowledge, plucking it from pages and storing it up, waiting for a chance to use it.” A Woman is No Man, Etaf Rum
“The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever.” The Library Book, Susan Orlean
“It’s not a book club if there isn’t wine.” This Is How It Always Is, Laurie Frankel
“We need each other! We need books! How else will we ever find ourselves?” Getting to Center, Marlee Grace
Answers in love and friendship:
“These hearts of ours are curious and contrary things.” Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
“You can’t guarantee that people won’t hurt or betray you - they will, be it a breakup or something as big and blinding as death. But evading heartbreak is how we miss our people, our purpose. I make a pact with myself and send it off into the desert: May I be awake enough to notice when love appears and bold enough to pursue it without knowing where it will lead.” Between Two Kingdoms, Suleika Jaouad
“Friends are powerful growers: they’re the earth and the sun and the water.” My Glory Was I had Such Friends, Amy Silverstein
“…she became that particularly wonderful kind of friend whose kitchen you know as well as your own.” The Comfort Food Diaries, Emily Nunn
"No matter how old you are, no matter how little or how much we've loved or lost, all of us deserve an occasional pair of arms around our waist as we stir the soup on the stove. It should never feel unavailable to us." Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton
"I need to remind myself of my anger, so I didn't inadvertently mix up good snacks with a good man." The Rachel Incident, Caroline O'Donoghue
“I remember these things clearly because that was how my mother loved you, not through white lies and constant verbal affirmation, but in subtle observations of what brought you joy, pocketed away to make you feel comforted and cared for without even realizing it. She remembered if you like your stews with extra broth, if you were sensitive to spice, if you hated tomatoes, if you didn't eat seafood, if you had a large appetite. She remembered which banchan side dish you emptied first so the next time you were over it'd be sit with a heaping double portion, served alongside the various other preferences that made you, you.” Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner
“People talk a lot about first loves, or the love of your life, but people don’t say as much about the friend of your life.” Unlikely Animals, Annie Hartnett
“We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.” The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green
“Perhaps a best friend is someone who…holds the story of your life in mind. Sometimes in music a melodic line is so beautiful the notes feel inevitable; you can anticipate the next note through a long rest. Maybe that is friendship. A best friend holds your story in mind so notes don’t have to be repeated.” Rules for Visiting, Jessica Francis Kane
“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation to me.” Circe, Madeline Miller
“I could fancy a love for life here almost possible.” Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
“I know that love can be loud and jubilant. It can be dancing in the swampy mud and the pouring rain at a festival and shouting 'YOU ARE FUCKING AMAZING' over the band... And I know that love is a pretty quiet thing. It's lying on the sofa together drinking coffee, talking about where you're going to go that morning to drink more coffee." Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton
“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself—no matter how bad—or good it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest things of all. But the best, as well.” A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
Answers in being a woman:
“The older we get, the more we understand that the women who know and love us – and love us despite what they know about us – are the joists that hold up the house of our existence. Everything depends on them.” Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, Anna Quindlen
“Nearly everything I know about love, I've learned in my long-term friendships with women." Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton
“I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them. Sometimes you mess the two up in a terrible tangle that’s hard to unravel.” Writers & Lovers, Lily King
"But she knew heroes were no longer required." American Mermaid, Julia Langbein
“But I’ve never been of sound mind. I come from a tribe of women who are ragged and joyous, loud, raging, tied to our own convoluted histories. We are a knot of branches, mud-speckled and ever-searching, and the man to make his way inside is someone who must grow from the same earth, the same brokenness. Or maybe, the men who come to us will only ever be visitors. We claim squatters’ rights in our tangled histories.” Banyan Moon, Thao Thai
Answers in navigating life:
“If I’ve learned anything from all the stories I’ve read – of love and friendship, adventure and bravery – it’s that living long is not the same as living well.” The Measure, Nikki Erlick
“Anything can happen. Depending on the day and our serotonin levels, this is either a promise or a threat.” Bad Vibes Only, Nora McInerny
“You’re not too messed up at all. You’re just as messed up as you should be.” Unlikely Animals, Annie Hartnett
“Happiness is not constantly needing things to be at their full potential.” The Dinner List, Rebecca Serle
“I have never understood why people think of champagne as celebratory rather than medicinal…Surely the only time one needs one’s blood effervesced is when life is utterly flat.” Sorrow and Bliss, Meg Mason
“Oh God, to return. To find a way back to yourself, the version of yourself that wanted nothing more than what you have, the version of yourself paralyzed by the fear of living through just enough hope to make a path for you. But if we could go back, we'd never move forward.” Congratulations, The Best is Over!, R. Eric Thomas
“Luckily, I had figured out that life was not a banquet at all but a potluck. A party celebrating nothing but the desire to be together, where everyone brings what they have, what they are able to at any given time, and it is accepted with equal love and equanimity. You can arrive with hot dogs because you are too tired or too poor to bring anything else, or you can bring the fancier, most elaborate dish in the world, and plenty of it, to share with people who brought the three-bean salad they clearly got at the grocery store. People do the best they can, at any given time. That’s the thing to remember.” The Comfort Food Diaries, Emily Nunn
“Because there is a void in my guts which can only be filled by songs.” The First Collection of Criticism my a Living Female Rock Critic, Jessica Hopper
“We are made of guts and heart and stories, not titles and W-2s.” From the Corner of the Oval, Beck Dorey Stein
“You can always do more. But your goal shouldn’t be to have the longest to-do list, or the longest been-done list, but to have a list of things you feel good about doing. The goal should be to do things you would do whether or not anyone was going to comment on them.” No Happy Endings, Nora McInerny
“The contents of supermarket baskets are surely evidence that none of us are coping with adulthood all that well.” Ghosts, Dolly Alderton
“What does it mean to have your life changed? A good piece of French toast can change my life. A wink, the way birds fly together.” Getting to Center, Marlee Grace
“If you don’t engage in the world, it’s pretty easy to be afraid of it. It’s easy to generalize about groups of people, to close yourself off to risk-taking, and to assume that people are out to get you. The world can be a very scary place, especially for those of us who are particularly sensitive, and for those of us who carry trauma. It is so scary that it can feel easier to just stay at home, loudly announcing on the internet that we don’t like people or we hate an entire country just because we had a bad food experience there...But the small life isn’t the good life. The good life is a hot mess, but along with rejection and people yelling at you in line because you can’t make up your damn mind already, it comes with intimacy and delightful interactions with strangers you’d otherwise never meet.” My Inner Sky: On Embracing Day, Night, and All the Times in Between, Mari Andrew
I hope you enjoyed this extra post, July’s recap will be in your inbox in a few weeks!
