her bibliotherapy

@feelefeelin

[stillsofherlife]

recent read•• August ’26

[theoptia]

Clarice Lispector, from A Breath of Life

[theoptia]

Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet

[ololygas]

Crackerbell, Mary Ruefle

[weltenwellen]

Andrea Gibson, "DEPRESSION [VERB]", Lord of the Butterflies

[letyourwordsliveon]

Doubt thins everything out, shows the void that always lies behind. Doubt that calls itself realism.

— Helen Garner, 1993, How to end a story

[letyourwordsliveon]

— Helen Garner, 1993, How to end a story

[letyourwordsliveon]

— Helen Garner, 1993, How to end a story

[furinuris]

"The more I read, the more every aspect of my personhood is reduced to deep diagnostic flaws. I hadn’t understood how far the disease had spread. How complete its takeover of my identity was. The things I want. The things I love. The way I speak. My passions, my fears, my zits, my eating habits, the amount of whiskey I drink, the way I listen, and the things I see. Everything—everything, all of it—is infected. My trauma is literally pumping through my blood, driving every decision in my brain."

What My Bones Know

Stephanie Foo

[funeral]

No matter what I do, no matter where I try to find joy, I instead find my trauma. And it whispers to me: "You will always be this way. It's never going to change. I will follow you. I will make you miserable forever. And then I will kill you.

Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

[funeral]

Because expressing the kindness to yourself that you deserve often reminds you of the kindness you didn't get. Trauma isn't just the sadness that comes from being beaten, or neglected, or insulted. . . . Trauma is also mourning the childhood you could have had. The childhood other kids around you had. . . . That sadness—the sadness of loss—is a different flavor than the sadness of reckoning. The sadness of reckoning feels visceral and angry and tinged with violence. It feels healable, somehow, with revenge or justice. But the sadness of a lost childhood feels like yearning, impossible desire. It feels like a hollow, insatiable hunger.

Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

[stillsofherlife]

Good Material by Dolly Alderton ⭐⭐⭐️⭐️💫

Andy and Jen broke up. Andy couldn’t understand why and carved out his time trying to figure out the answer. Some people would describe Andy as obsessive, but I found him relatable. I felt for his pain as if I was going through it, yet I couldn’t help but burst out laughing at the witty remarks Dolly Alderton suddenly injected. I can’t count how many times I had to sit up in bed and laughed like an idiot.

Then comes the last part, with its unexpected reveal, made me realize how much of what we see and feel is merely an extension of our own self-awareness. No single narrator can tell the whole story. Not all love stories are about who loves who less. The love that could be the vast blue sky for someone is merely a window view for someone else on the move to somewhere new.

[engulfes]

Literally what did olivia laing say about loneliness leading to more loneliness. Loneliness being so repulsive that people sense it from you and stay away. Crazy crazy

[engulfes]

[engulfes]

Furthermore:

[stillsofherlife]

intermezzo • 5/5

Good grief, Peter!

[letyourwordsliveon]

I don't think I've got anything you could call 'an argument', in this book. But I do see how a thought can curve around and connect with another in a graceful flourish.

— Helen Garner, 1993, How to end a story

[letyourwordsliveon]

'The immense beatitude of loving and being loved.'—Anthony Burgess in a BBC interview

— Helen Garner, 1990, How to end a story

[letyourwordsliveon]

I feel like a bombed city. All the remaining life is underground.

— Helen Garner, 1981, How to end a story