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Quote by John William Tuohy

“Denny thought our parents needed a combination of material goods and temperamental changes before he could return home. “If Dad buys Ma a car, then she’ll love him, and they’ll get back together and she won’t be all crazy anymore,” he said. For years he held out the possibility that those things would happen and all would change. “If we had more things, like stoves and cars,” he told me at night in our bedroom, “and Ma wasn’t like she is, we could go home.”

Quote by John William Tuohy

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No Time to Say Goodbye: A Memoir of a Life in Foster Care

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John William Tuohy

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“Looking back, I wish that everyone could have that sort of moment: a moment where you realize that your hands are so impossibly small and this world is so impossibly big. And the two don’t seem to add up. Maybe recognizing the smallness of your own hands is just the very first step to changing anything at all.”

“I didn't have a drill, so I had to make my own. First I heated a long nail in the fire, then drove it through a half a maize cob, creating a handle. I placed the nail back on the coals until it became red hot, then used it to bore holes into both sets of plastic blades.”

“There are many forms of poverty: economic poverty, physical poverty, emotional poverty, mental poverty, and spiritual poverty. As long as we relate primarily to each other's wealth, health, stability, intelligence, and soul strength, we cannot develop true community. Community is not a talent show in which we dazzle the world with our combined gifts. Community is the place where our poverty is acknowledged and accepted, not as something we have to learn to cope with as best as we can but as a true source of new life. Living community in whatever form - family, parish, twelve-step program, or intentional community - challenges us to come together at the place of our poverty, believing that there we can reveal our richness.”

“أكره الخيام! أكره رمزيتها! هي ليست منزلًا وهي ليست بوطن! هي تمنعنا من النظر إلى النجوم ولا تعطينا أرضًا مريحة للنوم. ماذا لو كان هناك دولة لشعوب الخيام! هل سيسكن زعيم تلك الدولة بخيمة أم داخل قصر؟ هل سيقدر على الإحساس بمشاكل وهموم شعبه من قصره؟ وهل ستكون له القدرة لإصلاح حال شعبه إن كان هو أيضًا يعيش بخيمة مثلهم؟! ربما نحن لا نليق لأن نكون كتلة منظمة! ربما نحن مثل بثور على البشرة! ماذا تفعل أدوية ومراهم البثور؟ هل تعمل على إزالة البثور من على الجلد تمامًا؟ أم أنها تحول البثور إلى جلد سليم؟”

“هل الجوع سبب أم نتيجة؟ هل الجوع هو الذي يمنعنا من تطوير أنفسنا وأماكن سكننا؟ هل هو السد الذي يقف أمام بنائنا للمدارس وتعليم الأطفال؟ أللجوع نُعزي عدم إنشائنا للمستشفيات والعيادات الطبية؟ أم نحن جائعون لأننا لم نقدر على تعليم أنفسنا من البداية؟”

“With the money my mother earned from selling cakes, my father cut a deal with Mangochi and bought one pail of maize. My mother took it to the mill, saved half the flour for us, and used the rest for more cakes. We did this every day, taking enough to eat and selling the rest. It was enough to provide our one blob of nsima each night, along with some pumpkin leaves. It was practically nothing, yet knowing it would be there somehow made the hunger less painful. "As long as we can stay in business," my father said, "we'll make it through. Our profit is that we live.”

“I think perhaps I will always hold a candle for you – even until it burns my hand. And when the light has long since gone …. I will be there in the darkness holding what remains, quite simply because I cannot let go.”