Bonnie

“It's worth remembering that [having a baby] is not of vital use to you as a woman. Yes, you could learn thousands of interesting things about love, strength, faith, fear, human relationships, genetic loyalty, and the effect of apricots on an immune digestive system. But I don't think there's a single lesson that motherhood has to offer that couldn't be learned elsewhere. If you want to know what's in motherhood for you, as a woman, then-in truth-it's nothing you couldn't get from, say, reading the 100 greatest books in human history; learning a foreign language well enough to argue in it; climbing hills; loving recklessly; sitting quietly, alone, in the dawn; drinking whiskey with revolutionaries; learning to do close-hand magic; swimming in a river in the winter; growing foxgloves, peas, and roses; calling your mum; singing while you walk; being polite; and always, always helping strangers. No one has ever claimed for a minute that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer and crippled by it. Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Newton, Faraday, Plato, Aquinas, Beethoven, Handel, Kant, Hume, Jesus. They all seem to have managed quite well.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

“time of the winter solstice. We lose all our energy, it feels like death and in the darkness”
― Sophie Cornish, Druids

“For those who believe in resurrection, death is inconsequential. It's not an ending but rather a new beginning. A second chance, a reunion. The very idea of resurrection is so seductive a concept it's easy to forget, before you can rise from the dead you have to spend a few days in hell.”
― Emily Thorne

“In ancient times the days before the winter solstice were the most frightening time of the year—the sun was dropping lower and lower in the sky and the days getting shorter and shorter, not to mention colder and colder. If the sun continued its descent, life would end. The people truly feared this. But by the twenty-fifth or so of December they would have been able to ascertain that the days were getting longer again, that the sun was ascending. That’s what the original Christmas celebration was for—the earth had been saved, or reborn, for another year.”
― David S. Brody, Powdered Gold: Templars and the American Ark of the Covenant