Kelly Harms > Quotes

“Sometimes a book about other people’s problems is way better than your own.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“It is a generous gift to do something you don’t necessarily want to do, at great expense of time and money, because you know it will make someone else very happy.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“Carpe somnum!” calls Daniel. “Seize the naps!”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“My house makes it so I never, ever have any extra money. If my house starts to notice I’ve been squirreling away a hundred dollars here or there to try to get my kids to a national park for a week, the house breaks something. I think it has abandonment issues.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“I get this now. I get now that you can love what you have, love your kids and your life and your friends, and still want more. I get that it’s ok to go out and get more—more love, more friendship, more fulfillment—and still be a wonderful mom.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“Sometimes a book about other people’s problems is way better than your own. I guess that’s what you’ve been onto with this reading thing all along?”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“Dad says people walk away from their families when they are trying to escape themselves,” she tells me. “He says we have to have compassion, because they may lose their loved ones, but they’ll never outrun themselves.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“but like in all long-term partnerships, what first drove me wild came to drive me nuts.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“the painful realization that your children need other people in their lives besides you, that soon you’ll be relegated to the sidelines of their adult lives and have no idea who you are anymore.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“Dear God in Heaven, I've been a good woman. When I die, all I want is Humphrey Bogart and Matt Damon feeding me grapes, all day long.”
― Kelly Harms, The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane

“You cannot argue with me, because this is a journal, not a text.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“But it’s hard—looking ahead, seeing their mistakes coming, and then, unless they are in actual mortal danger, holding their hands as they make them anyway.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“But guys who come home and ‘babysit’ their kids once in a while so you can see your friends for the first time in weeks, or expect you to thank them when they do a load of laundry? Nope. They don’t need dadspringas. They need reality checks.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“when you take positive steps in your life, the universe rewards you by making your path forward easier.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“Everyone knows the best medicine is a kiss from your mom.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“Yes,” says Lena, in her way. “Some people have to practice forgiveness and will never be naturals. They’ll either do the work and get awesome at it but always have to think it over—or never do the work and die with a sack of hurts the size of an elephant. I know, because I’m in danger of being one of those people whenever I stop paying attention.” Then she nods at me. “Some people, like your mother, forgive so naturally they don’t notice it happening. They’ll get hurt twice as often because they are so quick to forgive but feel it half as much because of their ability to let things go.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“Do you think forgiveness is a skill learned through practice, like playing chess, or a talent given to you at birth, like singing in tune?” “Yes,” says Lena, in her way. “Some people have to practice forgiveness and will never be naturals. They’ll either do the work and get awesome at it but always have to think it over—or never do the work and die with a sack of hurts the size of an elephant.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“For elementary school librarians, a picture of yourself with Flat Stanley is about as close as you can get to full-on street cred.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“And yes, it makes me crazy to think that my kids can go days -- or maybe weeks-- without me. If I'm not needed, if I'm not busy, if I'm not an overstretched, overwhelmed, under-slept, underpaid single mother...
What exactly am I?”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“Daniel leans back in his chair. “Is a crummy husband better than no husband?” he asks me. “No,” I answer in a heartbeat—and the clarity of my answer surprises me. “The last three years have proven that. Life may have been harder without John, but I don’t miss living with someone who was growing unhappier and more anxious by the day. By the end he was one of those dads that makes you feel like you have one more child than you gave birth to.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“What about what you want? Can forgiving him and enjoying time with him now actually make you feel better than holding a grudge against him for the rest of your lives? In other words, is punishing him what’s truly best for you?”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“Then she says something about how when you take positive steps in your life, the universe rewards you by making your path forward easier.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“I like people who are pretty kind deep down. And also who tell the truth. I like people who show up when they say they’re going to. Oh, and people who don’t think they’re better than everyone else.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“when we are young, it’s hard to choose who to love. When we are older, it becomes an imperative.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“I want to walk up a long, endless avenue and talk and talk and talk until the sun comes up, because this is New York, and I am on vacation, and life is so very, very good.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“It means understanding that to care for my children well, I must never again forget to care for myself.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“I don’t want to tour Europe for a week by train, even if I could scrape up the money to do so. I don’t want to spend the time finding my inner watercolorist or potter. Like every mother in America, I’m tired. I could sleep for a couple of those days straight.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“With the mistaken premise that my stay-at-home work and his accomplished career required equal emotional energy, I couldn’t understand where he got the vigor to worry about his ego being rejected or his sex drive being ignored. For me, it was all hands on deck, between our kids and our house and our work. Sex, passion, romance, I thought, could certainly wait. And maybe some part of me reasoned that when I had suffered a loss, he had been too busy to support me. So what could he possibly ask of me now? But now, in the fresh mental air of my momspringa, I start to understand the kind of neglect John must have felt when I fell asleep in one of the kids’ beds every night or stopped kissing him hello and instead threw a preschooler into his arms the minute he walked in the door. At the moment I’m walking in his shoes: my children are cared for by someone else, my days are spent in rich mental exercise, I get plenty of sleep, and I go to the gym every day. In other words, I have the emotional energy to think about desire and how good it feels to be wanted. Yes, John had clean pressed shirts without having to ask, and yes, we had family dinners together that looked perfect and tasted as good, and yes, he never had to be on call when Joe started getting bullied for the first time or when Cori’s tampon leaked at a diving tournament. Yet while I was bending over backward to meet his children’s every need, his own were going ignored. And was it the chicken or the egg that started that ball rolling? If he had, only once, driven the carpool in my place, would I have suddenly wanted to greet him at the door in Saran Wrap? Or was I so incredibly consumed with the worry-work of motherhood that no contribution from him would have made me look up from my kids? I don’t know. I only know that in this month, when I have gotten time with friends, time for myself, positive attention from men, and yep, a couple of nice new bras, parts of me that were asleep for far too long are starting to wake up. I am seeing my children with a new, longer lens and seeing how grown up they are, how capable. I am seeing John as the lonely, troubled man he was when he walked out on us and understanding, for the first time, what part I played in that. I am seeing Talia’s lifestyle choices—singlehood, careerism, passionate pursuits—as less outrageous and more reasonable than ever before. And most startling of all, I am seeing myself looking down the barrel of another six years of single parenting, martyrdom, and self-neglect and feeling very, very conflicted.”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“It would be hard to beat a man senseless with a plastic Hula-Hoop covered in sparkles, and yet for a long and rather pleasant moment, I consider trying. “Amy?” John asks. “Is that you?”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

“Mom, steer with the controller, not your body.” Now, as I sit on the hard wooden bench waiting for the New York express train, I realize I have been driving my life with my body. Trying somehow to carry my worries and sorrows and insecurities on my shoulders, as though I could wad up all the hurt and fear I’ve felt since John moved out, stuff it in a backpack,”
― Kelly Harms, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler