Mindful Mimi's blog has moved!

You will be automatically redirected to the new address. If that does not occur, visit
http://www.createandconnect.org/blog
and update your bookmarks.

What do women talk about when they know they don't have forever?

>> 18 January 2009


Yesterday I finished reading a book that moved me deeply.

Elizabeth Berg's Talk before Sleep is a tale of what women talk about when they know they don't have forever.

Ann and Ruth have always talked as only great friends can - honestly, and about everything: husbands and marriages, sex lives and children, their work, their hopes, their disappointments, and their dreams.

Both women are very different in character. While Ann is cautious and conventional, Ruth is outspoken and eccentric. This difference give each of them something they long for and need to learn.

Then everything changes.

Faced with a crisis that redefines the meaning of friendship, they begin to share something more profound than either of them might have predicted.

It is the story of these two women and their friends, talking, laughing, crying together that lures you into the pages, makes you part of it and leaves you breathless and crying at the end, but at the same time assured that you are part of this womanhood of the universe.

Today I want to share with you two quotations from this book which struck me with special meaning.

I saw that every person is a multifaceted and complex being, worthy of respectful exploration and discovery; that this longing we can't name and try to cure with relationships might only be us, wanting to know all of our own selves.

What matters most is only who you were to someone else.

4 comments:

Lance 19 January 2009 at 04:35  

These really are very powerful quotes, Mimi. The idea of a real desire to truly know ourselves - how true this is. The more deeply we understand "us" the more our life purpose makes sense.

And the idea of being someone to someone else - the real and important thing in life, I believe - being there for another human being - in the good, in the bad...in all of it...

Mindful Mimi 19 January 2009 at 09:34  

@Lance: I can't believe I spent so many years not 'getting it'. Running after things, wanting to 'be someone' etc.
Not sure I get it now, but I do get some of it. And this is one big part of it. Understanding yourself. Seeing what tiny little place you have in this world and what are the important people around you and making it the most important thing in life to nurture that little place and its people.

Anonymous,  19 January 2009 at 13:49  

Seems like a very good book. Every person is indeed complex, maybe that's why it took me so long to understand myself, haha!

Mindful Mimi 19 January 2009 at 14:16  

@Jocelyn: maybe we need to accept the fact that we will never know or understand ourselves 100% :-) it becomes easier after that.

Post a Comment

Blog template by simplyfabulousbloggertemplates.com

Back to TOP