Raina

“Grief is a swarm of feelings that swirls inside of you for your whole life; it's a weight that settles around the eyes, transforms the shape of a laugh. It is sadness mixed with a furious rage churning in an ocean of helplessness. It's an old word, dating back to the 1200s, and its latin roots mean to "make heavy." The first six definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary describe various types of hardship or physical pain. The seventh definition makes me think grief is the correct term for the storm of emotion I associate with my mom's mental illness. "Mental pain, distress, or sorry...deep or violent sorrow, caused by loss or trouble; a keen or bitter feeling of regret for something lost, remorse for something done, or sorrow for mishap to oneself or others.”
― Margaret Kimball, And Now I Spill the Family Secrets: An Illustrated Memoir

“Reading is a tool no one can take away. A million bad things may happen in life and it'll still be with you, like a flashlight that never needs a battary. Reading can offer a crack of light on the blackest of nights.”
― Blue Balliett

“We dreamed a lot of good stuff. Marriage and forever and ever and that kind of thing. It meant everything to me. Not just a lot. Everything.”
― Walter Dean Myers

“At [my old school], when teachers stood up to address us in assemblies, it was to urge us to study hard, stay focused, remain resilient, set goals, seek support. If there was a “leader,” she was the exception, not the norm.
Listening to [the adults here], I wonder if things would be different if we spent thirteen years being told that we were born to lead, and that the only thing that would ever hold us back would be a limited imagination.”
― Randa Abdel-Fattah, When Michael Met Mina