Gabrijela

“Go out with the certainty that you gave it everything you had and didn’t hold anything back. Go out empty-handed when it comes to should-haves and might-have-beens. Because it’s an infinitely more fulfilling way to live than the alternative. It will always be more honorable to be out in the field getting trampled on than to be on the sidelines feeling superior for never having tried.”
― Heidi Priebe, This Is Me Letting You Go

“This was a time when the government had implemented birth control policies called “family planning” to keep population growth under control. Abortion due to medical problems had been legal for ten years at that point, and checking the sex of the fetus and aborting females was common practice, as if “daughter” was a medical problem.”
― Cho Nam-Joo, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

“You need to be alone when you’re not ready. When you meet someone who’s patient and kind and well meaning and yet some part of you is holding back. You have to know that it is no one else’s job to break down the walls that you’ve built up – that is a fortress of your own responsibility. When you are not ready to give someone your whole heart out of fear of what they’ll do with it, it is yourself that you must learn how to trust. It’s yourself you must come back to, piece by careful piece as you learn that your heart is an endless, refillable vessel that does not deplete and fall apart when it is given away. It is yourself that you must learn to be alone with.”
― Heidi Priebe, This Is Me Letting You Go

“People who pop a painkiller at the smallest hint of a migraine, or who need anaesthetic cream to remove a mole, demand that women giving birth should gladly endure the pain, exhaustion, and mortal fear. As if that’s maternal love. This idea of “maternal love” is spreading like religious dogma. Accept Maternal Love as your Lord and Savior, for the Kingdom is near!”
― Cho Nam-Joo, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982