. . . when it comes down to it, that’s what life is all about: showing up for the people you love, again and again, until you can’t show up anymore.

Take this one in my belly. He (or she) is determined to be here. I can feel the force of his being. It's as if he has something to do here and just wants to arrive and grow up so he can get to it.

Judgements like "right" and "wrong"; only build barriers and encourage shame within individuals.

Sex can look like love if you don't know what love looks like.

. . . when it comes down to it, that’s what life is all about: showing up for the people you love, again and again, until you can’t show up anymore.

My mother is very ideologically based, and her ideology is much more important in many ways than her personal relationships.

Because mothers make us, because they map our emotional terrain before we even know we are capable of having an emotional terrain, they know just where to stick the dynamite. With a few small power plays - a skeptical comment, the withholding of approval or praise - a mother can devastate a daughter. Decades of subtle undermining can stunt a daughter, or so monopolize her energy that she in effect stunts herself. Muted, fearful, riddled with self-doubt, she can remain trapped in daughterhood forever, the one place she feels confident she knows the rules.