Anusha

“As babies, we are trapped in a strange, alien world, unable to see properly, constantly surprised at our bodies, alarmed by hunger and wind, and bowel movements, overwhelmed by our feelings. We are quite literally under attack. We need our mother to soothe out distress and make sense of the experience. As she does so, we slowly learn how to manage our physical and emotional states on her own. But our ability to contain ourselves directly depends on our mother's ability to contain us - if she never experienced containment by her own mother, how could she teach us what she does not know? Someone who has never learned to contain themselves is plagued by anxious feelings for the rest of their life.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“As much as I would love to romanticize that time, I can't. I was so unfinished. I asked God for a boyfriend, professional acting status, and the experience of traveling overseas, but I didn't ask for wisdom, I didn't ask for self-love, and it showed. I was with a man who never loved me. My objective the entire 7 years was earning his love.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“When heroin was doing the most damage to communities of color, the American response was aggressive criminalization. It is not exactly a cutting edge analysis to point out that the war on drugs disproportionately affected black men. And now heroin has, mediated by pharmaceutical opioids, made its way into every nook and cranny of the United States, indiscriminately, killing white and non-white folks like, we're screaming alarm. Our response is outrage at any perpetrator we can find (pharma, for instance) and sympathy, for those caught up in the grips of addiction. Whereas we jumped at the chance to throw black men in jail for possessing small amounts of drugs or drug paraphernalia, now we have books like this one, discussing the need to get people, clean needles, a safe space to inject, and treatment when they're ready. It would take serious, mental, gymnastics to make one believe that this has nothing to do with it, especially in a country riddled with a history of racism.”
― Travis Rieder, In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opioids

“Experts believe that the children of affluent suffer twice as much depression as the kids in the South Bronx or East New York. The findings are robust.These affluent kids are like hothouse flowers, who are propped up by their parents and support staff but who know that they can't measure up.”
― Blythe Grossberg