Quotes by Dee Williams

Being an entrepreneur is a mental job...It takes patients! YOU are doing more motivation to yourself than anyone on this planet.

The library made me feel safe, as if every question had an answer and there was nothing to be afraid of, as long as I could sort through another volume.

Books had rescued me when i most needed saving... Books were smarter than me and words inspired me... to try something new, charge forward without a clear understanding of what would happen next, because given something like death, what does it matter if one looks foolish now and then, or tries too hard, or cares too deeply?In the end, Thoreau, Whitman, Hafiz, and a dozen other writers put me up to the task of seeing if I dared to live a life worth living.

I thought: This is what the living do. And I swooned at the ordinary nature of the task and myself, at my chapped hands and square palms, at the way my wrists bent and fingers flexed inside this living body.

It was true; books had saved me in my home remodeling projects, but they fell short in teaching me how to trust my instincts, and how to stop thinking with my educated brain and more with my kneecaps and butt cheeks.

Over time, I discovered that learning new things doesnt always liberate you. Instead it makes you wonder if your pants are on backward or if the trees are holding the sky up - it makes you question all of your assumptions and conventions.

Maybe is wasnt love so much as a fear of losing everything Id accomplished. I was afraid to let go.

I never saw this coming - the little house was working its magic, connecting me to people and materials I never would have guessed would find their way into the picture.

We were taught not to offer or invite aid, because, like it or not, helping is a messy, confused proposition; sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong, and sometimes you have no choice but to trust that the man holding your tire iron, cussing at your old lug nuts, is a deeply kind human after all.

I had no idea that letting go would be so complicated; that it would sometimes feel liberating and other times more sorrowful and lonely. In the long run, most of it was like standing on the shore, watching your family set sail for America, and theyre smiling and waving good-bye, and getting smaller and smaller, but you are still the same size with no one to talk to.

Change what you can, darlin. Thats my best advice.

I went to Guatemala to help build a school but left wondering what help would really look like... I hadnt prepared myself for how humbled Id feel, or how hard it would be to find my footing when witnessing a cycle of poverty that seemed to defy any sort of help.

I felt like a champion because I was figuring shit out. I was a doer and a getter-doner, and it was okay to be identified by the neighbors as the little lady who had a dump truck of manure delivered, a load that made the entire neighborhood smell like a dairy barn for weeks.

Over time, I realized I wasnt necessarily seeing people or things at their best or worst; instead, I was simply seeing things as they were.There didnt seem to be a moral high road to take in most situations, and Whats the right thing to do? wasnt an easy question.

Ive never been good with asking for help; it seems risky, but at some point when things are really dicey, your stubbornness gives way to a certain form of humility that, after you get over yourself, feels liberating. I started to believe that the universe was conspiring to help me finish my house, sending people along at the right moment.

Perhaps the current state of my health should have raised a bright red caution flag, but instead it fired me up. I wanted to do what I wanted. I didnt care if hefting plywood and climbing ladders werent on my doctors recommended list of activities, or if I was foolhardy to think I could lift a fifty-pound roll of tar paper into and then out of my car. I was going to do it because it sounded like a blast, like the best possible way to have fun.

Sometimes the word gratitude feels too thin to explain things.

The space reminded me of the small hay-bale clubhouses and scrap-wood tree forts that my brothers and I had made as kids - high up spaces where you could see things differently, where you could get your bearings.

If more people understood how nice it is to have a sense of home that extends past our locked doors, past our neighbors padlocks, to the local food co-op and library, the sidewalks busted up by old trees - if we all held home with longer arms - wed live in a very different place...We wouldnt feel so alone, no matter the size of our houses or our bank accounts, no matter whether we had good health or congestive heart failure. We would begin to see that each moment presents an opportunity to relax, to notice that the wind has shifted and a storm is coming, or that our friends toddler has decided to wear dinner instead of eating it. We would see that each minute counts for something timeless and, if we want, we all can find our way inside these big, tiny, moments.

My friends stood on the ground two feet below me, and miles away from understanding why I would want to sleep on a trailer platform... I couldnt possibly begin to explain what was only beginning to bud inside me: I wanted a home. I wanted to be at home, in the world and in my body (a feeling I had been missing since Id woken up in the hospital) and somehow, in some as yet undefined way, I knew that windows in the great room and a skylight over my bed were going to help with that.