Potent quotables
I believe every word I said: nature is the greatest force of calm I’ve ever known. There’s nothing better for my own enormous feelings than to be made to feel small.
You trusting me feels like love. Because you’re so smart, and so successful, and when you trust me – it makes me trust me, too. I need that from you.
Lit review
Do you know what was probably not a great idea? Trying to read a nonfiction book in October 2025. Especially when that book was The Blood of Emmett Till.
As much as it’s highly relevant and important, I was having some trouble focusing due to tired gesture.
That’s why, on another lovely insomnia evening, I decided my brain needed some comfort food.
Enter The Heartbreak Hotel by Ellen O’Clover.
I could so clearly see myself in the pain of this book.
Meeting such a variety of characters going through their worst moments and seeing how they showed up for one another was so delightful.
I think something I really loved about this book was how not only personally relatable it was, although goodness it was in many ways. What I really appreciated was how it addressed trauma, and the ways it affects relationships and development at multiple stages of long term growth.
People who’ve been through similar traumas, whether it’s breakups or loss or abuse, can have wildly different responses. Two people who go through the exact same event can have completely different experiences and be affected differently.
What I also loved about this book was it’s depiction of two people who have been hurt in such different ways learning to see and understand one another through communication; even when those conversations are a little bumpy.
I think that’s such a gift of learning to talk about trauma that I don’t know if I’ve put into words before.
Most of my very closest friends are people who have been through incredibly hard things. I would argue that most people have been through incredibly hard things. It’s just that some people learn how to talk about it and some don’t.
Those who don’t feel so lonely. And loneliness is mean. It tells you that people are right to stay away. That you’re broken and no one cares.
But they do. I do.
Anyway, 5/5 stars