I'd finally come to understand what it had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in.

He kissed me hard and I kissed him back harder, like it was the end of an era that had lasted all of my life.

Forgiveness doesn't sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.

Small things such as this have saved me: how much I love my mother — even after all these years. How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger. So is yours. You are not grieving your son’s death because his death was ugly and unfair. You’re grieving it because you loved him truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of his death.

Every time I set foot on that trail, I feel grateful for the PCTA for doing the work it does to protect and preserve it

Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.

I was a pebble. I was a leaf. I was the jagged branch of a tree. I was nothing to them and they were everything to me.