Michelle

“I found it strange that no word exists for a parent who loses a child. If children lose their parents, they are orphans. If a husband loses his wife, he’s a widower. But there’s no word for a parent who loses a child. I’ve come to believe that the event is just too big, too monstrous, too overwhelming for words. No word could ever describe the feeling, so we leave it unsaid.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Stillness can’t really exist ... because even when we’re not moving, we’re breathing, and breath is movement.”
― Christina Baker Kline, The Scenic Route

“THE DASH SADDENS ME. THE SIMPLICITY MISSES SO much. It doesn’t allow for all the downs that bring a person low or the joys that lift them up. All the bends and turns that make up a lifetime are flattened and erased. The dash on a tombstone is wholly inadequate. Everything around it is more remarkable. The name, etched in cursive or dignified fonts. Sometimes a photo is carved into the grey granite, giving life to the dead. Yet the dash, that line that carries the entire sum of a life within it, is unremarkable.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“They...think their traumas are the most interesting thing about them."
"If their traumas are the most interesting things about them, how do they get over any of it?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow