Paula Halcom

“...But then I decided to dive a little deeper and said, "I wish I would've learned earlier on to be myself and express what mattered to me and how I actually felt about things." I didn't really know how to do that. I'd grown up hiding my feelings because there wasn't room for them while I lived with Suzanne [mom]. My goal at all times was to try and keep everything as calm as possible. I lived in a constant state of "Don't anger it." ...I hadn't meant to bring those things into my marriage, but the people pleaser in me had been forged by my first eighteen years. It turns out that wasn't just something that living on my own or being married could fix. It took me many years to figure it out that it was okay to voice discontentment or disagree with someone I loved.”
― Melanie Shankle, Here Be Dragons: Treading the Deep Waters of Motherhood, Mean Girls, and Generational Trauma

“Happiness is a choice as much as anything. Or you could choose to be angry, and if you stay angry long enough, it will become comfortable, like an old robe. But eventually you'll realize that old robe is all you've got, and there isn't anything else in the wardrobe that fits. And at that point, you're just waiting to trade the robe for a shroud—or at least, that's what I've always thought.”
― Kate Quinn, The Briar Club

“You don't have to make yourself OK for a good mother; a good mother makes herself OK for you.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Adults always think they can protect children by stopping them from going to dangerous places, but every teenager knows that's pointless, because the most dangerous place on earth is inside us. Fragile hearts break in palaces and in dark alleys alike.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends