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It was chilly when we went to the storytelling festival, so I bought a shawl, and now I’m embellishing it with Nancy’s drawings and maybe a poem or two to help me memorize them. It’s something I want to do – memorize quotes and poems and poem fragments that fill me up. Here’s the first one. Angela sent it to me just when I needed it.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.

Naomi Shihab Nye

I will say it and stitch it, I will wrap it around me till I know it by heart and it becomes a part of me.

[ :: ]

If you’d like to be part of a digital gratitude quilt, go right here.

~~~~~~~~~

She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning.