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 – A Poignant and Inspiring Coming-of-Age Story About Mothers and Daughters

“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

“...when we feel powerless, we stop trying to find a better way.”
― Walter Dean Myers

“White people--guys especially--always imagine another way because their paths have always been saturated with forks. For Abuela and mi mamá, there was no fork. No other way.”
― Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything