The Many Daughters of Afong Moy

The most important lesson I can teach you is to never settle for what others want you to be. Find a way to be the person you need to be to truly be happy. Don't give in to convention. Don't make the same mistake I did. Marriage to the wrong person is like stepping in quicksand, you lose yourself, bit by bit, slowly suffocating until your disappear completely.

Each generation is built upon the genetic ruins of the past. That our lives are merely biological waypoints. We're not individual flowers, annuals that bloom and then die. We're perennials. A part of us comes back each new season, carrying a bit of the genus of the previous floret.

That's the point, isn't it? To keep learning. To grow. To do more good than harm. To create compassion. To understand that every person you encounter is not there by coincidence. All of us play a role in another person's life. What goes around comes around.

We don't have to grieve only those we know. Sometimes we grieve for that which was lost. That which was never allowed to be.

Karma is more like a suitcase. You have to be unafraid to open it up and look at what's inside, to unpack the things you do not need. Karma is the climate of the past which shapes how much leeway we have in the future.

In America, a lie becomes the truth with sufficient repetition.

Strangers are the people we forgot we needed in this life,

It was during those terrible years, Dorothy's early teens, that she confronted her mother,.... tearing her down with the crowbars and wrecking balls that only angry teenagers know how to wield against the weak spots of their parents' load-bearing walls.

I need to try again, to spend more time loving who my husband is instead of hating who he isn't.

Anis Mojgani once said about toddlers: They cannot be understood because they speak half English and half God.

If you plant an acorn ... it may grow to become an oak tree. Yet there is no acorn within that wooden body. Has the acorn been reborn as a tree? Or does the acorn grow up to be something else entirely? It's my belief that the acorn and the tree are an idea, spread out over an abstraction of time. And if that new tree, when fully grown, drops one acorn or a thousand, that idea keeps progressing as this thing we call life.

It's my belief that we are just an ever-changing collection of memories that, when added up, create the illusion of self.

Our insanity is not that we see people who aren’t there, it’s that we ignore the ones who are.

Hearts don't have maps," Zofia said. Zoe smiled. "Oh, but they do. They're written inside you, and only a very special person can read it and follow its directions to a buried treasure." Zoe touched the place above her heart. "We all have a buried treasure and it's right here.

Dorothy remembered an old line of poetry from Rupi Kaur: If people were rain, men would be drizzle, and women a hurricane.

The idea of treating trauma passed down from one generation to the next in humans was highly controversial, to say the least. Just the idea of historical trauma was argumentative, though the concept had been widely accepted in Native American communities for hundreds of years, or more recently, within groups descended from Holocaust survivors. Yet therapists and geneticists had been puzzled for decades, searching for evidence of what they called transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.

good than harm, to create compassion, to understand that every person you encounter is not there by coincidence? All of us play a role in another person’s life.

Epigenetics combined with the philosophical idea of Determinism made me wonder if free will is—if not an illusion—a bit of a mirage. That, in addition to the environment we grow up in, the contour and texture of our lives are shaped—in part—by some form of genetic predetermination.

If you plant an acorn,” he said, “it may grow to become an oak tree. Yet there is no acorn within that wooden body. Has the acorn been reborn as a tree? Or does the acorn grow to be something else entirely?

you’re both waves on the same ocean. Of course, you are separate, you crest and you fall as individual waves, but fundamentally you come from the same place, and when the ocean is calm, it is impossible to tell where he ends and you begin.

The bandleader sang 'Every time I see a crowd of people, just like a fool, I stop and stare. It's really not the proper thing to do, but maybe you'll be there.

The woman smiled. “That’s not exactly how karma works.” “Sorry.” Dorothy hesitated, then said, “How does it work?” “It’s likely that I will spend the rest of my life trying to figure that out,” Xi said. “But that’s the point, isn’t it, to keep learning, to grow, to do more good than harm, to create compassion, to understand that every person you encounter is not there by coincidence? All of us play a role in another person’s life.

As electricity discharged inside distant clouds, Dorothy could see her again, hands on the cold glass, staring up into the darkness, waiting.

My big sister taught me those dances and she always insisted on leading. Gave me a new appreciation for that quote about Fred Astaire: Sure, he was great, but Ginger Rogers did everything he did, backwards and in high heels.

imagination + a desire for the world to make sense = a society that thinks dogs always look like their owners.

poetry from Rupi Kaur: If people were rain, men would be drizzle, and women a hurricane.

We all have some experience of a feeling, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time—of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances.” —CHARLES DICKENS

We don’t have to grieve only those we know. Sometimes we grieve for that which was lost, that which was never allowed to be.

The idea of epigenetic inheritance has long been embraced in many communities. Native Americans have talked about living with generational trauma for as long as I can remember and a hotly debated study of Holocaust survivors appears to show a higher percentage of PTSDs, depression, and anxiety in their children and grandchildren.