"There is no such thing as happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart! and never forget that until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: wait and hope."
--Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
this is the story of my struggle with mental illness. this will be a place of hope, healing, joy, prayer, sadness, suffering, perseverance, and truth.
i long to share my heart with the world, and feel called to do so. i hope my truth will touch someone else's heart in some way.
in high school i had a beautiful teacher who loved words. she had the soul of an artist, a poet, a writer, a believer. on our senior retreat she would give everyone a word - their word - a word that encompassed them as a person. she would tell us that this was the word we were born to say... the word we were born to be.
she would say that there are so many silences waiting to be broken, with words that only you were born to say.
she gave me the word "soul-singer", and later, when i returned to the retreat as the spiritual director she gave me the phrase "song sung true."
i hope to live up to these words. i am breaking the silence and saying the words only i was born to say. i choose to live my life as a song sung true - a song sung from the very bottom of my soul. this will be a place to share that song with you, and i pray that you will find some hope and maybe even some joy along the way with me.
in loving memory of Kathleen Nicholas
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