“Reclaiming ourselves usually means coming to recognize and accept that we have in us both sides of everything. We are capable of fear and courage, generosity and selfishness, vulnerability and strength. These things do not cancel each other out but offer us a full range of power and response to life. Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity. It is not an either/or world. In calling ourselves “heads” or “tails,” we may never own and spend our human currency, the pure gold of which our coin is made.
One of life’s blessings is the discovery that many of the things I once believed to be my shortcomings have turned out in the long run to be my strengths, and other things of which I was unduly proud have revealed themselves in the end to be among my shortcomings. What a blessing it is to outlive your self-judgments and harvest your failures.”
–Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal
