Elif Shafak’s focus on women of color makes her work compelling. Her novels trace her evolution from young feminist angst to mature compassion.
Death is hard to think about. Gardening gave me a surprisingly comfortable context in which to explore it.
I found lessons of love in trees, support through loss in a common lizard.
I found my kinship with green things when I was 8, watching fascinated as baby shoots poked out of the mud laid on a try, where I’d sprinkled mustard seeds a few days earlier. I didn’t know it then but I became a gardener that day.
Stop trying to heal people hoping that they will love you for it. That is not how healing works.
Are you out of breath? There will be days like this one. Not warm enough to fight. Not bright enough to shield from.
I am a gardener.
My garden is paradise.
Everyone else withers away into corpses, but a writer leaves behind a corpus. Reading is an act of timeless love. Be a reader.
Nobody feels safe right now. Why is it okay for one to weaponise their pain? It’s an unhealthy way to get through the day.
How does one learn waiting when one has always lived from distraction to distraction? What are goals but distractions from a life that is endless waiting while drifting?