Your heart is the size of your fist; keep loving, keep fighting.

I've been thinking about disowning some of my genes lately. I have a few healthy, happy, long-living optimists in my family tree - most of them fans of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, a major champion of positive thinking. But I've got plenty of ancestors who played out more tortured hands.

A lot of women make choices based on how they saw their mother's choices working out, how they saw the choices of the women elders in their lives working out. There's some rebellion in that, but there's also some deep reflection.

Everything is freedom and everything is loneliness. Make your choice and let the rest fall away.

When you study postpartum depression, there is a very clear understanding that in communities where you see more support, there is less depression.

Settling other people's land is an American tradition.

I've never been socially outgoing, but I suspect I've gotten more and more ambivalent about making new friends. I'm irritated by how-do-you-do chit-chat, but that's how new relationships usually begin.