Year in Review: Best Quotes from 2019!

All year I curate the words of poets, writers, artists, world thinkers, and healing professionals to inspire and energize our work. It’s sort of like my online Poetry Post. Here’s a look back on the best of 2019. If you’re on Facebook, you can follow these types of posts on my page “Healing Vicarious Trauma.” It’s also where I collect funny videos about therapy and counseling. (Please continue to send me your own favorites in 2020 so I can share with your fellow travelers!)

December

“And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. But don’t give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers–perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.” Rainer Maria Rilke

November

“Fear is a question. What are you afraid of and why? Our fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if we explore them.” Marilyn French

October

“If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.” Mr. Rogers

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our lives is change.” Dan Gilbert

“Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.” Carl Jung

September

“I think that we’re all into safe spaces right now. But we might need more brave spaces, where people speak their truth and we start to lean in and listen to things that make us uncomfortable instead of walking away from each other. Safe spaces tend to really worry about when somebody is in discomfort, we need to nurture them and make them feel like they’re safe and they’re OK. And in a brave space, when you feel discomfort, you’re supposed to sit with it and acknowledge that that’s part of the process towards growth.”  Irene Sofia Lucio

August

“All freedom is relative—you know too well—and sometimes it’s no freedom at all, but simply the cage widening far away from you, the bars abstracted with distance but still there, as when they ‘free’ wild animals into nature preserves only to contain them yet again by larger borders. But I took it anyway, that widening.” Ocean Vuong

1. Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself.
2. You make the job; it doesn’t make you.
3. Your real life is with us, your family.
4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.

Toni Morrison

July

“I see you, and by seeing you, I bring you into being.” Susan David, PhD

March

“If you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.” Brene Brown

February

“It’s hard to put into words what sometimes you pick up in the ether, the quiet, cruel nuances of not belonging—the subtle cues that tell you to not risk anything, to find your people and just stay put.” Michelle Obama

January

“your voice is a place i want to take shelter in, a place that makes me feel safe and soft.” Zaeema J. Hussain