Marissa J

“Do you think—” She paused, scraping the celery into a bowl. “Do you think Daddy loved you?” “I think everybody who ever hurt me loved me,” her mother said. “Do you think he loved me?” Her mother touched her cheek. “Yes,” she said. “But I couldn’t wait around to see.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“Real quick, I just wanna tell you why I wrote this book. I wanted to write a book about fat ladies—because I am one. Not curvy, not plus-size, not big-boned, not fluffy, not phat. I’m FAT.”
― Nicole Byer, #VERYFAT #VERYBRAVE: The Fat Girl's Guide to Being #Brave and Not a Dejected, Melancholy, Down-in-the-Dumps Weeping Fat Girl in a Bikini

“one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit.1”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“Witches interest me,” Dr. Poesy said. “If you look at most female archetypes—the mother, the virgin, the whore—their power comes from their relation to men. But not the Witch. The Witch derives her power from nature. She calls forth her dreams with spells and incantations. With poetry. And I think that’s why we are frightened of them. What’s scarier to the world of men than a woman limited only by her imagination”
― Ryan La Sala, Reverie