From Operating Instructions

May 10

She's tiptoeing into the very beginning of some sort of relationship with God, or with a higher power, or something, but it is very hard for her to believe...

I recommended that she think of all of the women who have most adored her in her life and to come up with a sense of God based on that kind of love, on the same protectedness that it gives you to be loved by a really fine woman, a sense of some mysterious regenerative force at the center of things that is maybe just love. She said with great surprise, "I didn't know you could DO that," and I said, "Oh yeah, you can do anything you want, " and by this morning, she'd found a picture of a big cat licking a little cat. She's a great cat lover, and it stuck. So at the hospital this morning, as she sat in the doctor's office getting the chemo IV, and then as she sat around at home all day waiting to become Linda Blair, she said she'd picture this big cat licking her gently and carrying her in its mouth to safer places.

-Anne Lamott