Payton

“The mind for investigation and logic. The heart for empathy and insight. She combined those two qualities in ways I'd never encountered before. Without even trying, she made me rethink my own path in life, my own way of relating to people, and the things that I valued. She made everything about me and everyone around her better. And she did it by being quietly, effortlessly original.”
― Patton Oswalt, I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

“For me, understanding the patterns has been both heartbreaking and liberating. Seeing the pattern means you can break it. It’s not easy, and some days, it feels like I’m fighting against my own instincts. That urge to fawn, to sacrifice my well-being on the altar of others’ comfort, still lurks in the shadows of my psyche. But every time I speak up instead of staying silent, every time I honor my own needs instead of burying them, every time I allow someone else to sit with their discomfort instead of rushing to smooth things over—I’m severing another link in that chain of generational trauma, that toxic relay race passing the baton of pain from one generation to the next.”
― Shari Franke, The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom

“Now all my friends are having babies.
Every time someone announces their pregnancy, I feel a vague sense of loss I can't quite parse.
I have all this care to give.”
― Courtney Gustafson, Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats

“My identity had always been tied to achievable goals for which I would be rewarded with another report card, another publication, another prize. I had no idea who I was if I wasn’t a writer, and wasn’t that how it was supposed to be? hadn’t we all been asked since grade school what we wanted to be when we grew up? I had worked hard for it. I had defined myself by it.”
― Courtney Gustafson, Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats