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Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition

Book by Rachel Naomi Remen · 6 quotes · Way, Listening, Attention

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AllWayListeningAttentionJust ListenKitchen TableMayPeoplePersonsSilenceGivingKnowsNeedsPowerfulStoriesImportantAbleCompassionDifferentHealHealing

Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition Quotes

“Most people have come to prefer certain of lifes experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain and even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness”

PeopleKnowsMayPainCertainSufferingValuesLeftCompassionRiskGreatnessComfortCostPaperSeekingUglyDenyIntimacyRejectsQuestsCheatAvoidingRejectingHidden Things
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“When we haven't the time to listen to each other's stories we seek out experts to tell us how to live. The less time we spend together at the kitchen table, the more how-to books appear in the stores and on our bookshelves. But reading such books is a very different thing than listening to someone' s lived experience. Because we have stopped listening to each other we may even have forgotten how to listen, stopped learning how to recognize meaning and fill ourselves from the ordinary events of our lives. We have become solitary; readers and watchers rather than sharers and participants.”

MayBookDifferentStoriesTogetherReadingOur LivesEventsHavensListeningReaderOrdinaryTablesForgottenStoresExpertsKitchenDifferent ThingsSolitaryParticipantsWatchersBookshelvesKitchen Table
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“I have even learned to respond to someone crying by just listening. In the old days I used to reach for the tissues, until I realized that passing a person a tissue may be just another way to shut them down, to take them out of their experience of sadness and grief. Now I just listen. When they have cried all they need to cry, they find me there with them.”

WayNeedsMayPersonsUsedGriefSadnessCryListeningI RealizedPassingPassingsCriedAnother WayFind MeOld DaysJust ListenTissues
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“In our instinctive attachments, our fear of change, and our wish for certainty and permanence, we may undercut the impermanence which is our greatest strength, our most fundamental identity. Without impermanence, there is no process. The nature of life is change. All hope is based on process.”

MayLife IsWishProcessChangeIdentityFundamentalsCertaintyAttachmentImpermanencePermanenceFear Of ChangeUndercut
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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