23 Comments

This Is Happiness is an endlessly quotable novel, is it not??

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Endlessly! Filled a page or two of my commonplace book. Finished this week and just loved it.

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Such a lovely reflection — these questions sparked hope and wonder in me!

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So glad Bethany! Thank you for reading!

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💛

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Oh!…if there were more of your grandmother, what a different world it could be…

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She always said "When God made me He threw away the mold" - too bad!!

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This was such a powerful read for me, it's hard to put into words. So I'll just say: thank you.

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Thank you so much Kerri x

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Beautiful post! Thanks for sharing. My grandparents have been an important stabilizing force in my life also.

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Beautiful and thank you for sharing hope.

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"All I’m saying is I only ever knew my grandmother from age seventy-seven on and the imprint she left on my life has been immense."

What a wonderful thought. Thank you.

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Beautiful!

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Thank you, Katie, for this inspirational and profound post. It nourished me more than I can adequately express.

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Thank you Julie - your kind words mean a lot! I'm so glad.

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You are most welcome, Katie.

Thank you for the feedback.

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What an adorable picture of you and your grandmother--i can see so much love there!

I'm 59 and still really close with my childhood best friend (we met under a tree at the age of four). And then I have new-found cousins whom I adore who are 90. Getting a letter from them makes me so happy--like a schoolgirl. Four of my children just got married and two have had children. It's like the empty nest is expanding again in new ways.

As usual a beautiful piece of writing.

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Thank you Adrienne - I adored my grandmother! We all did. I love hearing about the beauty of your expanding intergenerational family. Such a gift of passing time!

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I loved this, Katie! When I was pregnant with my first, I kept marveling that someone who was so important to my life could be so close to me, but I didn't yet know simple things about them like their name or birthday! Time is so wibbly-wobbly -- this essay did a great job of capturing that!

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"timey wimey stuff" as Doctor Who would say! So many 'what ifs?' and abstractions in the biggest moments in life. Thank you so much for reading!

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This is a lovely thing to dwell on.

I love your cookbook nook! We tossed the hulking, horribly unattractive microwave in our apartment and my husband replaced the area with a lovely shelf for my cookbooks and tea.

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Cookbooks and tea beat a microwave anyday!

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Gosh, this is lovely.

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