Vanessa Ya Lopez

“Children are compelled to give meaning to what is happening to them. When there is no clear explanation, they make one up; the intersection of trauma and the developmentally appropriate egocentrism of childhood often leads a little kid to think, I made it happen.”
― Nadine Burke Harris, The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity—A Transformative Guide to Understanding Childhood Trauma and Health

“You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.”
― Amy Bloom

“The connection you are creating here is like a flower. It requires soil and sun, things that, thanks to God, are given freely. But it is you, all of us, who has to water the flower to make it grow. Without water, all relations remain small. They can’t open, and eventually they die.”
― Tembi Locke, From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

“Pain is part of life. That much I knew. If I could just teach her how to be resilient, how to love big, how to fear less. How to weather hurt, either at the hands of others or even the hurts she might unknowingly inflict on herself. I wanted her to know that love can come in many forms. That sometimes it can look like letting go, but it can also look like never letting go. That one day she might have to love someone in ways the world wasn’t ready for. That reaching for that kind of love would bring with it struggle, but in the end, it could be grander than her wildest imaginings.”
― Tembi Locke, From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home