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Quote by Karen Elizabeth Gordon

“We all ended up somewhere with our various uncertain lives flapping about us in tatters and our pockets full of foreign coins.”

Quote by Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Author

Karen Elizabeth Gordon
Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Karen Elizabeth Gordon, born on March 17, 1947, is a renowned figure in an unknown field. Her life experiences and contributions are not well-documented, but her impact and evaluation in the field are highly regarded. more

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“We are all a people in need. We are not perfect. We are not machines. We make mistakes. We need grace. We need compassion. We need help at times. We need other people. And that's okay.”

“People say, "I have heart disease," not "I am heart disease." Somehow the presumption of a person's individuality is not compromised by those diagnostic labels. All the labels tell us is that the person has a specific challenge with which he or she struggles in a highly diverse life. But call someone "a schizophrenic" or "a borderline" and the shorthand has a way of closing the chapter on the person. It reduces a multifaceted human being to a diagnosis and lulls us into a false sense that those words tell us who the person is, rather than only telling us how the person suffers.”

“If the ecological crisis, for example, is to be solved and if we are to promote genuine justice and thus bring real peace to the planet-and with it the possibility of improving lives on every level, not just economically, socially, and politically, but spiritually, psychologically, and intellectually-then, just on a practical level, we need to have all of the religions working together.”

“You'll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things.”

“I don't know when the idea of suicide first occurred to me. In some ways, it had been in the back of my mind for years. Yet, oddly, I would never have thought of it as an option. It was the perceived lack of options-the final, unacceptable solution to a grave and insoluble dilemma. I had always thought of it in the same way: If all else fails, if I have nowhere else to turn, I can do this.”

“Even at this stage, my preparations were like strapping on a parachute in an airplane that was about to crash; the whole time I was preparing to hurl myself out the door, I clung to the hope that something would happen at the last minute to forestall that terrible necessity I felt-not hostility, as psychiatric texts would say, or vengeful rage, or a desire for attention. This was done in secret, out of a need to alleviate pain which was as implacable as thirst.”

“I would never kill myself intentionally. I couldn't do that to my family, my friends ... But to have fate step in and give me a shove, that's a different matter. Then I have the exit, without the guilt. I am ashamed of myself for thinking like this. But more than anything, I am frightened that it makes me feel so much better to think about it. Sometimes it eases the terror, the sense that I am condemned eternally to this hell.”