Girls like you can't understand," Julia said, and it was true. Ellie had been popular. She didn't know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a lifetime.

Whenever I write about motherhood - and I write about it a lot - I am drawing on my experiences as a mother and also my experiences as a daughter.

I prefer to scare myself in the ordinary ways, Daddy. Like letting my children cross the country for college. Why bungee jump when you can put a kindergartener on a school bus? Now, that's real terror.

And no one drank just one shot of tequila.

Of course you can fall in love. You just have to let yourself. They don't call it falling for nothing. -Kate

Jude remembered this pain. Every woman had felt some version of it: the end of first love. It was when you learned, for good and always, that love could be impermanent.

She is like a child picking at a scab, unable to stop herself even though she knows it will hurt.