To view your life as blessed does not require you to deny your pain. It simply demands a more complicated vision, one in which a condition or event is not either good or bad but is, rather, both good and bad, not sequentially, but simultaneously.
Nancy MairsIn a society that prates about, but seldom practices, communication, the craving to be listened to, heard, understood - which originates with the first terrified wail, the circling arms, the breast, the consolatory murmur - is hard to assuage.
Nancy MairsIf the very thought of taking off all your clothes in the middle of the Washington Mall during a school holiday makes you blush, you haven't even begun to dream what it feels like to publish a book.
Nancy Mairs