Control is a big issue when you're sick. It's the first thing you lose - other losses come later.

Friendships aren't perfect and yet they are very precious. For me, not expecting perfection all in one place was a great release.

Boys don't make passes at female smart asses.

The all American work ethic, destructive enough by itself, also packs a gender double standard that strip-mines the natural resources of both parents. It has taught us that as their earnings and success increase, men become "more manly," while women become "less feminine." This perverse cultural dynamic gives fathers an incentive to stay away from their families and kill themselves at work, while coercing mothers to limit their career commitment, which in turn limits their wages and shortchanges their families.

A family stitched together with love seldom unravels.

Apathy is the self-defense of the powerless.

The risk for a woman who considers her helpless children her "job" is that the children's growth toward self-sufficiency may be experienced as a refutation of the mother's indispensability, and she may unconsciously sabotage their growth as a result.