Good Giving Up - Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

"So often our focus is on supporting the identities and structures that were put in place for us by the more powerful damaged people in the family as caricatures of themselves. Giving up even one of these identities can be threatening to the organism. But the willingness to change comes when the pain of staying where you are is too great….”  -Anne Lamott, p. 212 of Almost Everything

 

Stuck - Rattlesnake Creek, Missoula, Montana

"…the natural fixation that you can rescue your kids, and ought to. 
Your good ideas for them would certainly straighten them out and help them make healthier choices. These would help you enjoy life more, too, so what’s the harm in your little suggestions, demands, funding?

The harm is in the unwanted help or helping them when they need to figure things out for themselves.

Help is the sunny side of control.

There is nothing outside them, nothing they can date, buy, or achieve, that will fill the hole in side them or help them hit the reset button. 
But it’s very productive of you to try, and try, although they tend to get sicker, as do you. Plus, they start to hate you. So there’s that." 
-Anne Lamott, p.57 of Almost Everything

Autumn Streamside - Corvallis, Montana

“What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!” – Helen Keller, deaf & blind US lecturer, 1880 - 1968

(Added joy: I managed to not make a splash in today's beauteous scene at the lurching ‘snap!’ of a seemingly sturdy limb wedged into the log jamup!)