but sometimes one person can hold you up in life, keep you standing, and without that hand to hold, you can find yourself free-falling no matter how strong you used to be, no matter how hard you try to remain steady.

In the sea of grief, there were islands of grace, moments in time when one could remember what was left rather than all that had been lost.

Real friends. The kind that don't purposely hurt your feelings or stop liking you for no reason.

He was afraid that the secrets she'd kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would--for one heartbeat--flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red.

but sometimes one person can hold you up in life, keep you standing, and without that hand to hold, you can find yourself free-falling no matter how strong you used to be, no matter how hard you try to remain steady.

We women. as glue for the family. lead lives that are important and conflicted. What we women choose to give up for our families is important and valid.

What good did it do to light the world on fire if she had to watch the glow alone?