That's what just hit me: How you really can't have everything. You have to give up the old to get the new. You can't be the child and the mom at the same time. You can't be your young self and your old self at the same time. You can't know what you know now and feel the way you did then. You can't, you can't, you can't.

We're looking for stories that speak to us. We're looking for stories that connect us with something true. But, instead, a lot of the time we get strippers. All I'm saying is, when boys are writing the stories, the percentage of strippers is bound to go up. And real stories about real women kinda don't get written at all.

Nobody was perfect. Not even close. And everybody had wrinkles from smiling and squinting and craining their necks. Everybody has marks on their bodies from years of living- a trail of life left on them. Evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they are.

Sometimes there is no way to hold your life together. Sometimes things just have to fall apart.

It's always better to have what you have than to get what you wanted.

The best things about womanhood might possibly even be the conversations. The chatting. The gabbing. The whispering. The hands-on-hips eye-rolling. The yukking-it up.

I guess that's the upside of not being young anymore... You know from experience that the struggle always leads, in some way, to something better.