The caretaking has to be done. "Somebody's got to be the mommy." Individually, we underestimate this need, and as a society we make inadequate provision for it. Women take up the slack, making the need invisible as we step in to fill it.

Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.

Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.

The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.

Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.

Learning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with patterns, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity.

Fear is not a good teacher. The lessons of fear are quickly forgotten.