It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didn't have to look for, didn't have to prove anything to, didn't have to worry about losing. Which is why, when it happened, it hurt so badly.
Jodi PicoultIt was a catch-22: If you didnโt put the trauma behind you, you couldnโt move on. But if you did put the trauma behind you, you willingly gave up your claim to the person you were before it happened.
Jodi PicoultLike the teens I worked with, I understood the need for miracles--they kept reality from paralyzing you
Jodi PicoultIt turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when youโre alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice.
Jodi PicoultWhen you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one.
Jodi Picoult