Tabitha Jean

“My only real hope was school: an education would be my token to freedom.”
― Stephanie Land, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive

“Her mother was peaceful. She was calm. The sight filled Alice with the kind of green hope she found at the bottom of rock pools at low tide but never managed to cup in her hands.
The more time she spent with her mother in the garden, the more deeply Alice understood- from the tilt of Agnes's wrist when she inspected a new bud, to the light that reached her eyes when she lifted her chin, and the thin rings of dirt that encircled her fingers as she coaxed new fern fronds from the soil- the truest parts of her mother bloomed among her plants. Especially when she talked to the flowers. Her eyes glazed over and she mumbled in a secret language, a word here, a phrase there as she snapped flowers off their stems and tucked into her pockets.
Sorrowful remembrance, she'd say as she plucked a bindweed flower from its vine. Love, returned. The citrusy scent of lemon myrtle would fill the air as she tore it from a branch. Pleasures of memory. Her mother pocketed a scarlet palm of kangaroo paw.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“We can make our partners into the source of our hope, love, strength, ability to feel or regulate our own emotions, as well as the source of our meaning and purpose in life. Our partners can be the inspiration for these things, as well as the objects or focus of our love, but they should not be the source of it. You are the source of your happiness, love, courage, emotional regulation and purpose, and the sooner that you can release your partner from being the source of these experiences the better for everyone involved”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“I hope you're well, Alice.
Here's to courage. And to heart, right?
How about, here's also to the future, and everything it holds.
Moss.

Alice shook the envelope; a packet of desert pea seeds fell into her palm.
'That looks like some kind of magic,' Sally said.
Alice gave her a small smile. 'It is.' She closed her hand around the packet of seeds, feeling their individual shapes and thinking of the color they would grow. To the future.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart