Interesting stories brought about by author’s research into her family.

“Long before I learned how many reasons I had to worry about losing my mind, I worried about losing it.”

“Over the course of our lives, in our own mirrors, we encounter many people who came before us. The past and present blur in our very being; the divide between living and dead becomes porous. “I am the family face,” the poet Thomas Hardy wrote. “Flesh perishes, I live on.”

…”creativity and craziness go together,” because “if you’re just plain crazy without being able to sing or dance or write good poems, no one is going to want to have babies with you. Your genes will fall by the wayside.”

“The goal, she says, is not salvation but the removal of confusion, the return of connection and clarity. We can see more clearly where we need to go, how we may best live, if we know precisely, in our bones, who and where we came from.”