Ioana

“It is often said that the first sound we hear in the womb is our mother’s heartbeat. Actually, the first sound to vibrate our newly developed hearing apparatus is the pulse of our mother’s blood through her veins and arteries. We vibrate to that primordial rhythm even before we have ears to hear. Before we were conceived, we existed in part as an egg in our mother’s ovary. All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent five months in our grandmother’s womb and she in turn formed within the womb of her grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born. . . .”
― Ashley Audrain, The Push

“The comfort I found in you was consuming—I had nothing when I met you, and so you effortlessly became my everything”
― Ashley Audrain, The Push

“The library is my safe harbor since I dare not go into the cafeteria alone, a whale surrounded by starving sharks.”
― Lisa Fipps, Starfish

“Your unconditional belief in me felt magical. I desperately wanted to prove to myself that I was as good as you thought I was.”
― Ashley Audrain, The Push