Terry Tempest Williams

Respect is primary.

Choosing with integrity means finding ways to speak up that honor your reality, the reality of others, and your willingness to meet in the center of that large field. It__ hard sometimes.

What is evolution if not creative adaptation and the progression of our own souls?

What is it about the relationship of a mother that can heal or hurt us? Her womb is the first landscape we inhabit. It is here we learn to respond - to move, to listen, to be nourished and grow. In her body we grow to be human as our tails disappear and our gills turn to lungs. Our maternal environment is perfectly safe - dark, warm, and wet. It is a residency inside the Feminine. When we outgrow our mother's body, our cramps become her own. We move. She labors. Our body turns upside down in hers as we journey through the birth canal. She pushes in pain. We emerge, a head. She pushes one more time, and we slide out like a fish. Slapped on the back by the doctor, we breath. The umbilical cord is cut - not at our request. Separation is immediate. A mother reclaims her body, for her own life. Not ours. Minutes old, our first death is our own birth.

When I look in the mirror, I see a woman with secrets. When we don__ listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don__, others will abandon us.

When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship.

the unexpected action of deep listening can create a space of transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair.

There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.

To write,_ Marguerite Duras remarked, __s also not to speak. It is to keep silent. It is to howl noiselessly.

Silence introduced in a society that worships noise is like the Moon exposing the night. Behind darkness is our fear. Within silence our voice dwells. What is required from both is that we be still. We focus. We listen. We see and we hear. The unexpected emerges.

Storytelling awakens us to that which is real. Honest. . . . it transcends the individual. . . . Those things that are most personal are most general, and are, in turn, most trusted. Stories bind. . . . They are basic to who we are.A story composite personality which grows out of its community. It maintains a stability within that community, providing common knowledge as to how things are, how things should be -- knowledge based on experience. These stories become the conscience of the group. They belong to everyone.