Elaine

“I miss her when I can’t remember what works best on insect bites, and when nobody else cares how rude the receptionist at the doctor’s office was to me. Whether she actually would have flown in to act as baby nurse or mailed me cotton balls and calamine lotion if she were alive isn’t really the issue. It’s the fact that I can’t ask her for these things that makes me miss her all over again.”
― Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss

“You’re driving in the car and you feel like your whole world has fallen apart. And people in the car beside you are laughing and carrying on. Their life is normal, and you think, ‘Goddamn it. What gives you the right to laugh?’ Because nothing has happened to them. You don’t understand how everything else can go on normally when your life will never be normal again. Ever.”
― Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss

“As for happy…The pursuit of happiness may be written into our Declaration of Independence, but that only means our founding fathers were hopelessly sentimental. You don’t pursue happiness. You pursue everything you need to have a fulfilled life, and then, if you achieve it, you’ll be happy some of the time. The rest of the time, you’ll be content. One can’t sustain happiness forever.”
― Kelley Armstrong, Betrayals

“When a daughter loses a mother, she learns early that human relationships are temporary, that terminations are beyond her control, and her feelings of basic trust and security are shattered. The result? A sense of inner fragility and overriding vulnerability. She discovers she’s not immune to unfortunate events, and the fear of subsequent similar losses may become a defining characteristic of her personality.”
― Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss