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Beauty is The Lifeboat
Establishing our own individual lives is the very foundation for psychological development… The symbolic pattern is clear. Our growth depends upon our ability to muster the courage and awareness to separate ourselves from the group mind-set of our families and the conventional wisdom they embody. Which is not to say their values are wrong. We must disentangle ourselves from them and then decide how we want to relate to them from our own standpoints.
— by Bud Harris, PhD
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Literature opened my eyes to the world. When I started reading in high school, I had the impression that the author, whether South American or Australian, was speaking to me directly. Years later, when in the factory where I worked I was bullied for not collaborating with the dictatorship, when I was kicked out of the office and had to work on the stairs, I began writing my first book. I didn’t want to do literature, I wanted to know how I was going to survive. It was a way of not losing my reason, which was my biggest fear. I thought under no circumstances could I go crazy, because then they would have won. It wasn’t that weird. Saw friends that happened to them.
— Herta Müller
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And to me it has been providential to be an artist, a great act of providence that I was able to turn my borderline psychosis into…
