I'd forgotten how that sort of craving felt, how it rose suddenly and loudly from the pit of my stomach like a flock of startle birds, then floated back down in the slow, beguiling way of feathers.

You have untold strengths and resources inside. You have your glorious self.

I know you've run away - everybody gets the urge to do that some time - but sooner or later you'll want to go home.

That's the sacred intent of life, of God--to move us continuously toward growth, toward recovering all that is lost and orphaned within us and restoring the divine image imprinted on our soul.

It's easy to operate under the illusion that what we are doing is so important we cannot stop doing it. ... Stopping is a spiritual act. It is the refuge where we drink life in.

I realize what a strange in-between place I am in. The Young Woman inside has turned to go, but the Old Woman has not shown up.

I often went to Catholic mass or Eucharist at the Episcopal church, nourished by the symbol and power of this profound feeding ritual. It never occurred to me how odd it was that women, who have presided over the domain of food and feeding for thousands of years, were historically and routinely barred from presiding over it in a spiritual context. And when the priest held out the host and said, "This is my body, given for you," not once did I recognize that it is women in the act of breastfeeding who most truly embody those words and who are also most excluded from ritually saying them.