Shannon L. Alder

"Apathetic people sit back and wait for things to get better before they move. Radical people make things get better, by how they move."

"All of us at one point end face up in a ditch, but only a few will choose to look up at the stars and dream."

"The goal for most people should not be to feel better, but to get better at feeling."

"The journey is the mystery…the destination the answer. If you don’t have a happy ending yet, you have not finished reading the right book."

"The true measure of a best friend is where they are when you “make” the biggest decision of your life, not where they were during the decision process."

"The problem with our culture is we cling to so many different truths. Yet, the truths that we cling to also depend on our point of view. Maybe, the journey to a truth that can be free of hatred, bias and injustice requires a journey of the soul to see all view points."

"Satan will always whisper don't care, be silent, you didn't do anything wrong, your better than them, your stronger than your enemies. However, a true daughter or son of God says back: I hurt so I will make it right. I was silent, but now I am ready to listen and share. I am not better because I know what I have done. I am not stronger than my enemies by hating them, but by healing them."

"It is growing up different. It is extreme hypersensitivity. It is a bottomless pit of feeling you're failing, but three days later, you feel you can do anything, only to end the week where you began. It is not learning from your mistakes. It is distrusting people because you have been hurt enough. It is moments of knowing your pain is self inflicted, followed by blaming the world. It is wanting to listen, but you just can’t anymore because your life has been to full of people that have judged you. It is fighting to be right; so for once in your life someone will respect and hear you for a change. It is a tiring life of endless games with people, in order to seek stimulus. It is a hyper focus, so intense about what bothers you, that you can’t pay attention to anything else, for very long. It is a never-ending routine of forgetting things. It is a boredom and lack of contentment that keeps you running into the arms of anyone that has enough patience to stick around. It wears you out. It wears everyone out. It makes you question God’s plan. You misinterpret everything, and you allow your creative mind to fill the gaps with the same old chains that bind you. It narrows your vision of who you let into your life. It is speaking and acting without thinking. It is disconnecting from the ones you love because your mind has taken you back to what you can’t let go of. It is risk taking, thrill seeking and moodiness that never ends. You hang your hope on “signs” and abandon reason for remedy. It is devotion to the gifts and talents you have been given, that provide temporary relief. It is the latching onto the acceptance of others---like a scared child abandoned on a sidewalk. It is a drive that has no end, and without “focus” it takes you nowhere. It is the deepest anger when someone you love hurts you, and the greatest love when they don't. It is beauty when it has purpose. It is agony when it doesn’t. It is called Attention Deficit Disorder."

"Nothing changes until people decide to do the things they must, in order to bring about peace."

"Are we not all actors playing parts in another person's play?"

"Never stand in the way of letting God use people’s actions, in order to solve a greater issue in the world."

"The daggers of silence last longer than anything ever spoken."

"Often subtle clues are not obvious enough for the stubborn or stupid. This is when God stops throwing crumbs and starts throwing the whole piece of bread. If you step on moldy bread then you know you have waited too long."

"Dreams are built around the word hello, but in the end fate only knows the word goodbye."

"There are many things evil people can take from you. However, they can never steal your ability to laugh and laugh loud."

"I think timing is better left up to God to decide then religious leaders. I once met a man that brought his wife flowers in the hospital. They held hands, kissed and were as affectionate as any cute couple could be. They were both in their eighties. I asked them how long they were married. I expected them to tell me fifty years or longer. To my surprise, they said only five years. He then began to explain to me that he was married thirty years to someone that didn’t love him, and then he remarried a second time only to have his second wife die of cancer, two years later. I looked at my patient (his wife) sitting in the wheelchair next to him smiling. She added that she had been widowed two times. Both of her marriages lasted fifteen years. I was curious, so I asked them why they would even bother pursuing love again at their age. He looked at me with astonishment and said, “Do you really think that you stop looking for a soulmate at our age? Do you honestly believe that God would stop caring about how much I needed it still, just because I am nearing the end of my life? No, he left the best for last. I have lived through hell, but if I only get five years of happiness with this woman then it was worth the years of struggle I have been through."

"Grace will meet you in the valley, and her song will carry you home on the wind to another sky filled with ethereal beauty unfolding and love everlasting."

"There is nothing more dangerous to the adventurous spirit than a secure future that can predict the same sun on every horizon because they only see the same view."

"You are not your past. You are the warrior that rose above it to become the example of someone who didn't survive, but thrived in creating the most beautiful last chapter of their life."

"Writing isn’t necessarily a gift it is a passion. You can write a one page masterpiece to 99 pages of crap. What keeps you coming back is that Zen moment when you enlightened your own self with a few cleverly arranged words and saved yourself a $200 trip to the shrink, by simply buying a #2 pencil."