But there is room now in my heart for more memories, carved by a letting go that I could find only by coming home to a place I'd never been.

Life isn't perfect. It's not supposed to be. We all make mistakes. You bash your head against the wall and you get hurt, but you walk away and make the best of it. And that's what makes it life, Brenna, not perfection. You'll never find happiness if you only expect to find a perfect life. Happiness is something we reach for while we try to learn from our disappointments.

They say that not matter how old you become, when you are with your siblings, you revert back to childhood.

A life without rain is like the sun without shade.

But I think sometimes a person has to be forced underwater to see if they're going to drown or swim.

Every woman needs a daughter to tell her stories to.

Mama?" "Yes, Emmy." She traced a rivulet of rain with her finger as it made its journey down the glass. "How do you know when it's been long enough?" Emmy could sense her mother smiling into the phone. "When you relaize that love doesn't have a time span. Only pain does. I think sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the two, so we just hold on to both of them like they're inseparable.