First person allows deeper insight into the protagonist's character. It allows the reader to identify more fully with the protagonist and to share her world quite intimately. So it suits a story focused on one character's personal journey. However, first person shuts out insights into other characters.

My daughter," I said blankly. "I see. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought it took a man, as well as a woman, to make a child. Is this infant's father to be a crab, or a seagull maybe? Or were you planning to shipwreck some likely sailor on my doorstep, so I can make convenient use of him?

I know it's hard for you to trust me. If I ever find the man who did this to you, who made you so frightened, I'll kill him with my bare hands. But you can trust me.

You don't like it that I am the one you need to keep the wolf from the door; that comes as no surprise. But I am the one you have. At some point we'll both have to risk telling the truth.

He and I…we share a bond. Not love, exactly. It goes beyond that. He is mine as surely as sun follows moon across the sky. Mine before ever I knew he existed. Mine until death and beyond.

We draw our strength from the great oaks of the forest. As they take their nourishment from the soil, and from the rains that feed the soil, so we find our courage in the pattern of living things around us. They stand through storm and tempest. They grow and renew themselves. Like a grove of young oaks, we remain strong.

Hope is such a tenuous quality. To feel it and then to be denied what one most longs for ... Better, surely, not to hope at all, than to open the heart to a hope that is impossible.