Mary

“Every story in this book is about how we learned the value of the false self, how we unlearned it, and the price we paid trying to attain it.
As the false self is formed, Bradshaw says, the authentic self goes into hiding. The false self is a masterpiece.
Because the false self is an act of overcompensation for a part of us we believe to be damaged”
― Lucia Osborne-Crowley, My Body Keeps Your Secrets

“I know all women are supposed to be strong enough now to strangle presidents and patriarchies between their powerful thighs, but it doesn't work that way. Many of us were actually affected, by male systems and male anger, in ways we cannot always articulate or overcome. Sometimes, when the ceiling seems especially low and the past especially close, I think to myself, I did not make it out. I am still there in that place of diminishment, where that voice an octave deeper than mine is telling me what I am.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

“I have made my way into myself and learned that love, too, is contagious. I have learned that healing is possible. That we can make lives that we couldn’t even have imagined when we were little and that we can carry the little ones who we were into these new and luminous lives.”
― Michele Filgate, What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence