“I’ve worked wood long enough to know it flows right up out of the ground like the flow of a stream. If there is an adversity there, if someone’s tacked bob wire to it, if there is a big rock there close to it, it will swallow it, surround it and make it part of it. In ways it makes that tree stronger. I feel the same way about adversity, about negative stuff that comes into your life… It’s hard to do. Your first instinct is to get the hell away from it but if you can, embrace it, deal with it. It can become part of you and make you stronger. If you allow yourself, you will grow over it and you will be stronger when you are done with it. You won’t be weaker the next time it comes around. It won’t hurt near as bad.”
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— Terry Ratliff, chairmaker in Eastern Kentucky, as quoted in Humans of Central Appalachia
Source: lostartpress.com