Meagan Church > Quotes

“If you, Dear Reader, have ever felt unseen, unheard, or untethered from the world around you, I hope this story reminds you that your existence, your presence, your voice, your heart is enough. You deserve to be here. You always have. Take care of yourself and each other.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Of course, sometimes we forget that dreams and nightmares are two sides of the same coin”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Life is a continual process of letting go, but this I choose to hold on to. This I will never surrender, because I remember. Always and forever, I remember.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“They say women forget, but we don’t. We tuck away the throes deep in our bones, forever carrying the memories in the recesses of our bodies.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Sometimes the memories we keep are the ones we’d rather forget. But they have a way of finding us in the night, whispering along the wind so we remember.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“All of us are evolutions of ourselves, changing over time as the calendar moves forward. Who we are when we leave this world is not who we were when we entered.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“How long had that tree stood there? How much had it seen? How many seasons had come and gone as it stood rooted in that one place, growing and dropping leaves, rebirthing and releasing year after year after year? How many times had the first beams of sunshine illuminated its languid branches and shimmered its dancing leaves, casting wavering shapes that shifted with the changing hours? I used to resist the dark places, but now I knew that the fullness of life includes all of it: the light, the dark, and the shadows that creep between.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Life is a continual process of letting go”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Together does not mean sameness. He didn’t know—wouldn’t know—what it felt like inside my body and mind. He would never understand existing in a body that fought itself. He would never know the urgency to live as the clock ticked louder, faster, time suddenly having a different quality to it. He wouldn’t know what it was to be the light caught in a jar, watching the lid turn and tighten, each breath one closer to the final, last suffocating one.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“And my hope moving forward is that we may all have the eyes to see the silent suffering in front of us, the ears to hear their cries, and the empathy to take their hand and let them know that they are not alone, because we are all ghosts of this mysterious realm called life.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“It’s surprising how much you can miss someone you’re not sure ever really loved you.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Sometimes forgetting is a mercy, and recalling is a pain too deep to bear”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Stories have a way of finding us at just the right—or sometimes the most fragile—moment. This one is steeped in history, woven with grief and longing, and tangled in the complexities of the human mind. It explores the weight of silence, the ache of the unseen, and the shadows that linger in the spaces between what is known and what is lost.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“The road home can be a long and winding drive, a labyrinth of memories and mistakes.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Strength isn’t in the loud and obvious. Strength is often camouflaged in the quiet, reserved places where most people wouldn’t think to look. It’s grown in the moments when we give up things along the way.”
― Meagan Church, The Girls We Sent Away

“I suppose it was in the darkness of the morning before the sun peeked over the horizon that I first came to believe that a home has a soul.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“In reality, the lobotomy was medically sanctioned silencing, to stop women from voicing how, and where, and why it hurt”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“sometimes we forget that dreams and nightmares are two sides of the same coin.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“We think we are the superior species, and yet there is so much we don’t know. Like the songs of birds. We hear the tune, but we don’t know the words. We only know what we want to hear.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Babies are blessings, they say. But what often goes unsaid is that blessings aren’t always what we expect. And sometimes when we focus on the light they bring, we miss the shadows that lurk behind.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Sometimes family's not who you've been given. It's who you choose.”
― Meagan Church, The Last Carolina Girl

“I pulled my blanket around me, thinking of how my life had been like a quilt—remnants of moments stitched together, some beautiful enough I’d want to be reminded of, others I’d rather discard into the scrap pile.”
― Meagan Church, The Last Carolina Girl

“I guess that's the thing about coming home; it's not the home that's changed, it's the person coming back who has.”
― Meagan Church, The Last Carolina Girl

“Of course, sometimes we forget that dreams and nightmares are two sides of the same coin.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Sometimes surviving means finding the strength to pick up the remnants of shattered dreams and piece together a mosaic of new ones, a continual work in progress, a constant decision to put one foot in front of the other, to fight against gravity, and keep moving forward.”
― Meagan Church, The Girls We Sent Away

“I had been grateful when he asked me out, when we went steady, when he proposed, and when we walked down the aisle. I was always thankful. What he didn’t realize was that I wanted more than a dishwasher. I wanted him to understand that without me having to tell him.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“But now I wanted nothing more than to be the girl so free that fireflies shined as her night-lights, cicadas sang her symphonies, and the forest stood as her cathedral.”
― Meagan Church, The Last Carolina Girl

“Sometimes forgetting is a mercy, and recalling is a pain too deep to bear.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Please, Henry, believe me. I know what I saw.” Without hesitation, Henry mumbled the last words we would speak to each other on the drive that day: “Like how you saw Esther?” His words pierced my heart like shards of glass, splintered daggers of a truth I couldn’t yet come to terms with.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“As his body shook, I remembered something I had forgotten: Esther wasn’t only mine. She was his, too.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife