TIHII.

Have you read Ursula Hegi's The Worst Thing I've Done? It is not an easy book, emotionally, but it and its characters are so absorbing.

And it has given me a way of thinking about things that does not seem simplistic, but that can bring a quiet amount of peace:

TIHII. A word her father once wrote with wine on the tabletop and then said aloud. "TIHII." Like the whinnying of a horse. When Annie asked him what it meant, her father touched each letter. "This . . . Is . . . How . . . It . . . Is. And what it means is that I can do nothing about getting laid off. Not make them keep me or pretend that it doesn't matter. This is how it is." When Annie tried out the sound and whinnied, her father laugh, and the lower half of his face widened, while his thick eyebrows curved down, changing the shape of his face. On the table, the letters were drying out. Annie dipper her index finger into his wineglass and ran it across the letters till they glistened again.