Confucius didn’t care much for women: When a girl, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son.
Men are so sure of themselves, and they have such courage and conviction. They believe-truly believe- that they can make things happen just by speaking the words, and in many cases they can.
It’s a Sun and Moon truth that if a husband sees his wife give birth, he might die from it.
Although I can’t possibly have a single memory of this place. Then, from deep within me, a profound sense of love radiating out to everything around me complemented by reciprocal waves of love coming at me, enveloping me. All.
Maybe stories and memories are destined to be incomplete...
Her restraint and control taught me a lesson I have not strayed from to this day. You may be desperate, but never let anyone see you as anything less than a cultivated woman.
For a tree that has many branches, even a small breeze will shake some loose.
What’s your first impression of a new place? Is it the first meal you eat? Your first ice cream cone? The first person you meet? The first night you spend in your new bed in your new home? The first broken promise?
The three-step farming system that gives our pigs food from our behinds, fertilizer for our dry fields from the pigs’ behinds, and a pig that can eventually be eaten.
A woman isn’t just one thing. The past is in us, constantly changing us. Heartache and failure shift perspectives as do joy and triumphs.
To believe in dreams is to spend half your life asleep.
The fallen leaves return to the root.
You may not know this, but the cold-water stress that the haenyeo endure is greater than for any other human group in the world.
This is how things were: heavyhearted, but done in the traditional manner. THE.
Women live quietly,” I said. “However angry or broken a woman might get, she does not think about beating someone, does she?
When the string breaks while working, there is still the rope. When the oars wear out, there is still the tree, ” she recited. “You feel you can’t go on, but you will.
You are a haenyeo! Never for one moment believe you are unworthy.
You aren’t aware your clothes are getting wet in the rain.
I used to think mothers-in-law are difficult the world over, but on that day I came to understand that they’re simply unknowable.
We had a meeting where we were supposed to learn how to respond to jerks who ask things like “When did you know you were adopted?” Most people picture a scene where the parents sit you down and you “find out who you are.” I didn’t need that meeting to know how to answer, because all I had to do was look in the mirror. When people ask me that question, I always say, “When did you find out you weren’t adopted? How do you know your mother is your birth mother?