Finding HopeHappy Brighton Pride! (2023)
Posted on August 5, 2023
So today my hometown of Brighton is celebrating Pride and, as the gay capital of the UK, we go very hard for Pride. There’s the parade, the festival in the park (which sounds really fun but I live really close to the park so I’m basically at the festival all weekend whether I want to be or not – the constant music is A LOT after a while), as well as the hundreds of events going on all over the city. The big celebrations are too much for me as an autistic person but I’ve been to some great smaller celebrations and, in general, the city (and all of our visitors – the trains and roads are absolutely packed) has a great time every year.
I wasn’t sure what to write for this post, if I’m honest. I’m still figuring out who I am – I guess that’s what happens when you spend your teenage years and twenties trying to manage and understand both your physical and mental health – so I don’t feel ready to write about that and although I’m so massively proud of my incredibly LGBTQ family, I haven’t figured out how to write about it yet.
So I thought I’d go looking for quotes that describe or relate to growing up in an LGBTQ family…
“DNA doesn’t make a family.” – Unknown
“I don’t care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching, they are your family.” – Jim Butcher
“Family is not defined by our genes, it is built and maintained through love.” – Unknown
“Blood doesn’t always make a parent; being a parent comes from the heart.” – Unknown
“Blood makes you related; love makes you family.” – Unknown
“Family isn’t defined by last names or by blood; it’s defined by commitment and by love.” – Dave Willis
“Some families are created in different ways but are still in every way a family.” – Unknown
“The last names may not match, but the hearts certainly do.” – Unknown
“Families don’t have to match. You don’t have to look like someone else to love them.” – Leigh Anne Tuohy
“Blended families are woven together by choice, strengthened by love, tested by everything and each are uniquely ours.” – Unknown
“Children can never have too many positive adult role models in their lives.” – Unknown
“I am who I am because of the people who influenced me growing up, and many of them were gay. No one has any right to tell anyone what makes a family.” – Drew Barrymore
“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” – Jane Howard
“The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.” – George Santayana
There really aren’t that many quotes, specifically about LGBTQ families; there are slightly more about multiple families that blend because of divorce and remarriage. Honestly, I didn’t expect a flood of them, but I did expect more than this. I didn’t find any quotes that came even close to describing my family – beyond generalised quotes about family being about love rather than being related – but then it is very unconventional. I’ve never met or even heard of a family as complex as mine. I like to refer to it as a constellation because it’s beautiful and unique and special and a really weird shape. Sometimes I do wonder what it would be like to have grown up in a conventional straight family but it’s only ever a passing curiosity. I love it, for all it’s quirks, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Quotes For Winter
Posted on November 20, 2022
With the early dusk, the chilly air, and the urge to curl up in front of a fire or under a blanket, I think it’s safe to say that we’re entering winter, at least in this part of the world. With the government we have right now, there are a lot of things to worry about going into the next few months but there’s nothing I can do on my silly little blog to change those, other than let you know that I’m going through it with you. It’s a scary time. But here are some quotes that hopefully inspire a little joy about this season…
“The last faded autumn leaflet hangs from a frozen branch, just a short fall from the tree to winter.” – Terri Guillemets
“In winter, forgive the fallen leaves of your past.” – Terri Guillemets
“Winter winds sweep away the dead leaves of our lives.” – Terri Guillemets
“In Winter, Mother Nature dims the lights, sleeps late, hides from the world, and regenerates. Winter is the hangover of seasons.” – Terri Guillemets
“Winter is a season of recovery and preparation.” – Paul Theroux
“The earth tucked herself in for the year with winter’s frosty white blanket of snow.” – Terri Guillemets
“Winter is a white-gray paradise blunted of details – the simple season.” – Terri Guillemets
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it – the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it – the whole story doesn’t show.” – Andrew Wyeth
“It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.” – John Burroughs
“Winter stars blaze in silent joy.” – Terri Guillemets
“All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better.” – John Burroughs
“This brilliant silence of winter is most touching, might I not say musical?” – Henry James Slack
“One kind word can warm three winter months.” – Japanese Proverb
“Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter’s evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day.” – Virginia Woolf
“Winter is a long, open time. The nights are as dark as the end of the world.” – Craig Childs
“Winter forms our character and brings out our best.” – Tim Allen
“In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus
“Wisdom comes with winters.” – Oscar Wilde
“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” – Hal Borland
“The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size.” – Gertrude Smith Wister
“If winter wrote an autobiography, it would be mostly about the spring.” – Terri Guillemets
“Winter is a lean, scrappy fighter. Spring blossoms from the sweat of Winter’s brow.” – Terri Guillemets
“Flowers have their fragrance, winter has its handful of memories.” – Lin Huiyin
I love winter so I have been looking forward to putting up this post. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, if only as a pleasant momentary distraction from the world. Let me know your favourite? Or do you have a favourite that I haven’t shared?
This series of posts is now over; we now have quotes for all four seasons, which is very satisfying. It’s been a fun challenge. And so, in conclusion, I leave you with this quote, which sums up this series pretty well…
“We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We cannot stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the universe that we cannot refuse. But we can choose what we will contribute to life when each arrives.” – Garry Zukhav
Quotes For Autumn
Posted on September 17, 2022
We have finally reached autumn, my favourite season. I love the light, the colours, the crunchy leaves, the crispness of the air… I love all of it. So I’m very happy that it’s finally upon us. And so, to celebrate, here are some quotes about this gorgeous time of year…
“There are two times of year: autumn and waiting for autumn.” – Unknown
“Autumn is the antidote to stifling summer.” – Terri Guillemets
“The sun tires of summer and sighs itself into autumn.” – Terri Guillemets
“Essentially, autumn is the quiet completion of spring and summer. Spring was all eagerness and beginnings, summer was growth and flowering. Autumn is the achievement summarized, the harvested grain, the ripened apple, the grape in the wine press. Autumn is the bright leaf in the woodland, the opened husk on the bittersweet berry, the froth of asters at the roadside.” – Hal Borland
“A glorious crown the year puts on…” – Phebe A. Holder
“… The world reveals itself in its true dimensions in the autumn…” – Hal Borland
“Somewhere along the way, I realized that the new year doesn’t begin for me in January. The new and fresh has always come for me in the fall. Ironically, as leaves are falling like rain, crunching beneath my feet with finality, I am vibrating with the excitement of birth and new beginnings… My year begins in autumn.” – Betsy Cañas Garmon
“I am standing in a new-minted world, summer folded away like a rose pressed in a book.” – Gladys Taber
“I step outside and the chilly air tightens the skin on my bare arms. Summer has ended all too quickly, and some of the leaves on the trees have already started to burn with the colors of fall. Fall colors… so bright and intense and beautiful. It’s like nature is trying to fill you up with color, to saturate you so you can stockpile it before winter turns everything muted and dreary.” – Siobhan Vivian
“Autumn repays the earth the leaves which summer lent it.” – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
“‘I’m dreading fall. It is a terrifying season,’ he says… ‘Everything shrivelling up and dying.’ I don’t know how to answer. Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale. I’ve never thought to be frightened of it.” – Lauren DeStefano
“We do not migrate as the birds do, but I notice there is a change in the rhythm of our life when the season ebbs… There is a quickening in the blood, a restlessness. Suddenly we are full of projects, which may be our own manner of migrating.” – Gladys Taber
“Autumn is the season of change.” – Taoist Proverb
“… Autumn winds shaking color from the trees…” – Terri Guillemets
“Light understands the colors of Autumn, and she loves him for it.” – Terri Guillemets
“I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Autumn is spring turned antique.” – Terri Guillemets
“Autumn writes her own poetry,
we are merely observers.” – Terri Guillemets
“Autumn carries more gold in its pockets than all the other seasons.” – Jim Bishop
“Autumn breathes in golden sunshine and breathes out a frosty chill.” – Terri Guillemets
“Autumn mornings: sunshine and crisp air, birdsong and calmness, year’s end and day’s beginnings.” – Terri Guillemets
“We want it to stay, but autumn always leaves. Beautifully.” – Terri Guillemets
“Autumn leaves blaze their swan song of colors and wait for winter to wipe the slate clean.” – Terri Guillemets
As I said, I’ve always loved autumn. The colours are so beautiful and there’s something about the light that seems different, feels different. And I love the bite in the air in the mornings; I can’t help thinking about how that’s what the expression ‘fresh start’ actually feels like. I feel more alive when the mornings feel like that. I’m also so used to a new academic year beginning in the autumn that I associate the time of year with new beginnings, even though I’m now no longer in education, and I can’t help feeling energised by that. That feeling might change now that I’m done with university (for the foreseeable future at least) but for now, I’ll try and enjoy that feeling.
Do you guys have any particular quotes about autumn or that you associate with autumn? Or maybe poems or songs? I have my playlist for each year but, at some point, I might make a playlist of songs that I associate with each season. That might be fun.
Finding Hope 