Here is someone who needs to learn better how to let others have some power and influence over her without her feeling too dependent.

But you don’t always need to be cared for. You don’t have to justify your existence by caring for others. Instead of making mutual care an absolute principle, you could understand that need, absence, and ignorance allow wonder and new life.

You can trust them [emotions and fantasies], not to arrange life the way you want it, but to arrange the elements of your soul in a way that will offer rich life in the future.

Part of the pain of love is that no person, however suitable and satisfying, completes the desire for love. There is always a remainder, because love takes us beyond the human sphere. It puts you in touch with the ultimate object of desire. It invites you to transcend yourself, to be more than you ever have been.

And then: one loves one another and there’s so much joy to be had from the physical manifestations of love. Your father has always been beautiful for me, and even now I can see through the latticework of time how exquisite he was as a young man. I know he has pleasure in seeing me. Despite my worn-down vellies and budding widow’s hump, after all these years he still looks at me expansively. And then there is the legend. It’s the legend holding the lustre through the years of worn reality— if you make sure that nobody steals it from you, as you make sure nobody takes your things or weeds don’t overgrow your garden. If you are watchful and patient, if you have humour but can be steadfast on cardinal matters and let smaller ones fall by the wayside, all this will meaningfully assist you in holding on to love, and nourishing belief in the legend.

Quite comforting, I think, but sometimes you can do as little with good advice as with bad advice.