“This book is a memoir - not of specific life events, but of the processes of dissociation, and of re-enlivening emotions that are shameful to admit or even to feel. It is an account of the altered ...”

“My breathe would catch at the sight of violets-so common in the woods at home, so surprising in the mountains. The violet's message was "Keep up your courage, stay true to what you believe in." p264”

“Other flowers came at the end of the summer, but by then the winter sadness had already dissipated, and the effect of the blooms was not the same.”

“Some people's lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That's what trauma does. It interrupts the plot. You can't process it because it doesn't fit with what came before o...”

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

“This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.”

“That is one good thing about this worldthere are always sure to be more springs.”

“People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, ...”

“It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done.”