Suzanne Valls

“If you have yet to be called an incorrigable, defiant woman,
don't worry, there is still time”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

“Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger, and the more alien the stranger, the stronger the whiff of negativity. We depend on the guarantee in our children's faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are a particular insult; we must love them for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do. Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination.”
― Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

“I’ll tell them all the good things and some difficulties. The parents may never accept what happened to them and yet accept their child. They’re two separate things, the parental loss, and the actual person they will almost always end up loving.”
― Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

“A Prayer
Refuse to fall down
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you from lifting your heart
toward heaven
only you.
It is in the middle of misery
that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.
”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, The Faithful Gardener: A Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die