Autumn Ryan

“I've amazed myself with how well I've learned to live around her absence. This void is my constant companion, no matter what I do. Nothing will fill it, and it will never go away.”
― Zinzi Clemmons, What We Lose

“There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly . . . survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of “waves.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle