Background Image

...

If I Had Lost A Leg, I Would Tell Them, Instead Of A Boy, No One Would Ever Ask Me If I Was 'over It'. They Would Ask Me How I Was Doing Learning To Walk Without My Leg. I Was Learning To Walk And To Breathe And To Live Without Wade. And What I Was Learning Is That It Was Never Going To Be The Life I Had Before.

-Elizabeth Edwards

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

If I Had Lost

Elizabeth Edwards

...

If I Had Lost A Leg, I Would Tell Them, Instead Of A Boy, No One Would Ever Ask Me If I Was 'over It'. They Would Ask Me How I Was Doing Learning To Walk Without My Leg. I Was Learning To Walk And To Breathe And To Live Without Wade. And What I Was Learning Is That It Was Never Going To Be The Life I Had Before.

Views: 6436

Topic

More From Elizabeth Edwards

You Recognize A Survivor When You See One. You Recognize A Fighter When You See One.

I Could Be Wrong, But I Think Heterosexual Marriage Is Threatened More By Heterosexuals. I Don't Know Why Gay Marriage Challenges My Marriage In Any Way.

Growing Up In An Italian Family, You Use A Harsh Tone And 10 Minutes Later Everybody Forgets About It.

I Was A 16-year-old Girl At One Point, So Of Course I Wrote Poetry.

I Think Self-knowledge Is The Rarest Trait In A Human Being.

I Hope I Have Important Things To Say.

Important Things

I Was An English Major In College, And Then I Went To Graduate School In English At The University Of North Carolina For Three Years.

I Want To Reclaim Who I Am.

If I Had Given Up Everything That My Life Was About ... I'd Let Cancer Win Before It Needed To.

You Know, There Are No Guarantees On Prognosis.

Successful Health Reform Must Not Just Make Health Insurance Affordable, Affordable Health Insurance Has To Make Health Care Affordable.

I Can't Turn On The Television Without Seeing Me, Or Open The Newspaper Without Seeing Me And, Honestly, I'm Sick To Death Of Me.

It Takes A Lot Of Work To Put Together A Marriage, To Put Together A Family And A Home.

A Lot Of Sad Stories In A Row - That Wears On You.

It's More Likely In America That Your Parents Will File For Bankruptcy Than Divorce. We Think Of Divorce As So Prevalent, But We All Know That Happens Because Somebody Moves Out Of The House.

Honestly, I Get Energized By The Crowds. They Feed Me Emotionally.

At The End Of Our Lives, We Will Not Be Judged By The Highest Public Office We Attained In Our Lifetime, If That Were True The Current President (george W. Bush) Would Hold As Much Esteem As Franklin Roosevelt In Our Country, And Nelson Mandela In His. That Cannot Be The Case. Rather, We Will Each Be Judged By The Mark We've Left On Others.

You Know, Everybody Knows Some Of What Politicians Say Is Malarkey, And Having Somebody There To Call Them On It Is Good. I'd Be Happy To Do That Any Time And Any Place.

I Come Out Of Real Life.

If I Had Lost A Leg, I Would Tell Them, Instead Of A Boy, No One Would Ever Ask Me If I Was 'over It'. They Would Ask Me How I Was Doing Learning To Walk Without My Leg. I Was Learning To Walk And To Breathe And To Live Without Wade. And What I Was Learning Is That It Was Never Going To Be The Life I Had Before.

I Do Think Voters Do Take Into Consideration - Particularly Early State Voters - Take Into Consideration A Wide Range Of Factors, Including Electability, And They Know That Part Of Electability Is The Total Package That You're Presenting.

I Don't Know Why Someone Else's Marriage Has Anything To Do With Me.

I'm Not Worried About Me Or What's Going To Happen To Me.

Brave People Are The Firemen Who Run Into The Burning Building. That's Brave.

The Way Campaign Funds Are Distributed Are All A Matter Of Record.

But I Have Found That In The Simple Act Of Living With Hope, And In The Daily Effort To Have A Positive Impact In The World, The Days I Do Have Are Made All The More Meaningful And Precious. And For That I Am Grateful.

Maybe We All Change Over Time.

Changes Over Time

My Job Is To Stay Alive Until The Medicine And Research Catch Up.

By What You Do, You Teach Your Children How To Respond To Difficult Information.

Concentrate On The Things That Matter To You.

Follow Your Passion

Things That Matter

The Days Of Our Lives, For All Of Us, Are Numbered.

A Positive Attitude Is Not Going To Save You. What It's Going To Do Is, Everyday, Between Now And The Day You Die, Whether That's A Short Time From Now Or A Long Time From Now, That Every Day, You're Going To Actually Live.

Those Who Need A Champion Cannot Afford Compromise, In The Face Of Forces That Are Powerful, Persistent And Pernicious And Greedy.

You All Know That I Have Been Sustained Throughout My Life By Three Saving Graces - My Family, My Friends, And A Faith In The Power Of Resilience And Hope. These Graces Have Carried Me Through Difficult Times And They Have Brought More Joy To The Good Times Than I Ever Could Have Imagined.

I Have A Lot That I Intend To Do In This Life.

I Have A Husband Who Adores Me.

One Of The Things That I Think You See Sometimes In Politics Is A Certain Degree Of Caution. It's Usually Advised By Consultants Who Don't Want To See You March To The End Of A Limb.

You Never Know When Something's Going To Hit You In A Particular Way And Just Knock You Loose.

I've Spent A Lot Of Words On My Own Mortality.

If I Say Something That Ends Up On The Front Page Of Drudge, I Haven't Done It Right.

I Grew Up In A Navy Family.

You Know, I Once Read A Short Story About How Much You Could Tell About People From Their Shoes. You Could Tell Where They Had Been, What They Did, Whether They Were Real Walkers.

I'm Actually One Of Those People Who Get Up Energetic In The Morning.

Everybody Has Their Burdens, Their Grief That They Carry With Them.

Almost Everybody Embraces Life.

I'm A Recovering Lawyer. The Practice Of Law Has Changed. Every Agreement Is A Fight.

You're Young. Maybe There'll Be Time For A Do-over If You Don't Get It Right The First Time. But There Are No Guarantees. There Will Come A Time As It Has For Me When There's No Time For A Do-over.

Part Of What I Want To Do Is Sort Of Reclaim My Story - It Belongs To Me And To My Children, Who Have To Live With Whoever Their Mother Is.

My Job As The Mother Of Daughters Is To Make Sure My Children See That Every Opportunity Is Available To Them.

Compromise Today Is Too Often Applauded Simply For Itself. The Cost Of Compromise To Principles And Real Lives Doesn't Seem To Matter.

The Photograph Contains And Constrains Within Its Own Boundaries, Excluding All Else, A Microcosmic Analogue Of The Framing Of Space Which Is Knowledge. As Such It Becomes A Metaphor Of Power, Having The Ability To Appropriate And Decontextualize Time And Space And Those Who Exist Within It.

Leave Me If You Must, But Be Faithful To Me If You Are With Me.

Sometimes You Get Politicians Who Dig Their Feet Into The Sand And Aren't Willing To Listen To Another Voice.

Life Is This Great Big Blackboard, And On It You Write All The Things That You Do.

I Have Less Energy Than I Did When I Was A Younger Parent, Although I Was Never Really A Young Parent.

My Heart Goes Out To The Grieving Parents Who Lost Their Two-year-old Or Their Newborn.

There Is Nothing About Resilience That I Can Say That My Father Did Not First Utter Silently In Eighteen Years Of Living Inside A Two-dimensional Cutout Of Himself.

We're All Going To Die.

I Have An Obligation To Try To Live As Long As I Can For My Family.

People Find It A Great Blessing If Their Child Left Behind A Child.

We Have A Middle Class That Lives On A Razor Blade. So Sometimes When You Say Poverty, You Neglect A Large Portion Of The Population.

To Be Perfectly Frank, There Is An Odd Place After Losing A Child, Where You Think Somehow Your Life Is Worth Less.

You Wouldn't Know I Was Sick Unless You Knew I Was Sick.

I Don't Expect To Get Yesterday's Medicine. If I Can Help It, I'd Like To Get Tomorrow's Medicine.

I Am Imperfect In A Million Ways, But I Always Thought I Was The Kind Of Woman, The Kind Of Wife To Whom A Husband Would Be Faithful.

We Were Never A Family That Had A Lot. We Had Enough, But Not A Lot.

You Don't Have To Be Perfect; You Just Have To Be Open.

I'm Part Of A Community That Holds Each Other Up, And It's Been Great To Be Held Up Too.

I Have Three Living Children For Whom This Is A Father Who I Want Them To Love And On Whom They're Going To Have To Rely If My Disease Takes A Bad Turn.

Part Of Resilience Is Deciding To Make Yourself Miserable Over Something That Matters, Or Deciding To Make Yourself Miserable Over Something That Doesn't Matter.

If You Know Someone Who Has Lost A Child, And You're Afraid To Mention Them Because You Think You Might Make Them Sad By Reminding Them That They Died-you're Not Reminding Them. They Didn't Forget They Died. What You're Reminding Them Of Is That You Remembered That They Lived, And That Is A Great Gift.

He Seems Like A Nice Charming Guy. [mike Huckabee] Doesn't Believe In Evolution And Has Some Nutty Views About What It Is We Should Do About Ending Violence In Our Inner City—we Should Make Sure All Of Our Young People Are Armed. Republicans Scare Me.

In A Sense, Having Cancer Takes You By The Shoulders And Shakes You.

I Love Children, Love Spending Time With Them; I Love Getting Things For Them.

I Think That We're Foolhardy To Not Be Engaging In Federal Funding Of Stem-cell Research In The Most Aggressive Way We Possibly Can.

I Certainly Have A Lot To Lament, As Do We All, Everybody Has Their Griefs. But The Griefs We Can Fix, Shouldn't We Go Around Fixing Them?

Whenever Anyone Pulls Out Of The Race, You Know, Unless They've Just Been Trounced In The Days Before, There's Also - Always A Lot Of Questions About Why That Happened.

It's Just A Part Of Our Nature To Hope.

Nordie's At Noon Is An Honest And Inspiring Testament To [these Authors'] Experiences Which, I Am Completely Confident... Will Inspire Thousands Of Women As It Inspired Me.

The Worst Thing To Me Would Be That You Put On The Face You Think People Want To See, And Then They Don't Like It And You Think, Would They Have Liked The Real Me?

This Diagnosis Is A Reminder That This Is The Life You've Got. And You're Not Getting Another One. Whatever Has Happened, You Have To Take This Life And Treasure And Protect It.

Everybody Makes Personal Decisions That Are Right For Them And If You're In Political Life, You're Used To Having Those Analyzed.

I'm Not Praying For God To Save Me From Cancer. I'm Not. God Will Enlighten Me When The Time Comes. And If I've Done The Right Thing, I Will Be Enlightened. And If I Believe, I'll Be Saved. And That's All He Promises Me.

She Stood In The Storm, And When The Wind Did Not Blow Her Way, She Adjusted Her Sails.

What Happened After Katrina Is That People Were Stirred To Action; There Were An Enormous Number Of Contributions By People Trying To Make A Difference. But Then We Forget. We've Forgotten Katrina Victims, We've Forgotten The Face Of Poverty.

I Do Know That When My Children Are Older And Telling Their Own Children About Their Grandmother, They Will Be Able To Say That She Stood In The Storm...and When The Wind Did Not Blow Her Way - - And It Surely Has Not - - She Adjusted Her Sails.

If People Think That You're Throwing Babies Out, Dissecting Children, To Do Stem-cell Research, I'm Not For That.

I Would Have Made Different Choices. You Know, I Might Have Married Somebody Else.

I'm Not A Victim - I Never Want To Be Perceived That Way.

Resilience Is Accepting Your New Reality, Even If It's Less Good Than The One You Had Before. You Can Fight It, You Can Do Nothing But Scream About What You've Lost, Or You Can Accept That And Try To Put Together Something That's Good.

... All Things Are Possible If You Are Willing To Put Yourself On The Line. You Cannot Stand Back And Hope For The Best. You Have To Act.

Hoping For The Best

The Military Is Already Sexually Integrated.

I've Often Said That The Most Important Thing You Can Give Your Children Is Wings. Because, You're Not Gonna Always Be Able To Bring Food To The Nest. You're... Sometimes... They're Gonna Have To Be Able To Fly By Themselves.

I Think I Did Marry A Marvelous Man.

I Think That It Is Our Intention To Deny Cancer Any Control Over Us.

I'm Completely Comfortable With Gay Marriage.

I've Had Experiences That, You Know, Really Couldn't Be Replaced.

I've Had To Come To Grips With A God That Fits My Own Experience, Which Is, My God Could Not Be Offering Protection And Not Have Protected My Boy.

Cancer Is Not A Straight Line. It's Up And Down.

A Lot Of People Have Great Hope, And A Lot Of People Who Have Great Hope Live. And, Some Of Them Who Have Great Hope Die. So It's Not That Hope Is Going To Save You.

Tabloid News Is Tabloid News.

The Days Of Our Lives, For All Of Us, Are Numbered. We Know That. And Yes, There Are Certainly Times When We Aren't Able To Muster As Much Strength And Patience As We Would Like. It's Called Being Human.

I Took My Son's Name. I Didn't Take My Husband's Name.

Resilience Is Accepting Your New Reality, Even If It's Less Good Than The One You Had Before.

My Father Had Gone To Vietnam.

I Think Being An Effective First Lady Is First Of All Being The Partner That Your Husband Needs.

Every Parent Has Gone Through A Period When Their Child Wasn't So Happy With Them.

You Have To Have Enough Respect For Other Human Beings To Leave Their Lives Alone. If You Admire That Life, Build It For Yourself. Don't Just Try To Come In And Take Somebody Else's Life.

Respecting Others

Either You Push Forward With The Things That You Were Doing Yesterday Or You Start Dying.

Trending Author

Christopher Parker

Category