Amanda

“I had recently read that making it through mothering alive required putting on your own oxygen mask before assisting others. Alas—I had failed to make the connection between survival and sunscreen.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“At once I understood that I had been looking at things with the right intention but from the wrong angle. My marriage was imperfect and my job lacked meaning, but I had been searching for complicated solutions instead of addressing the common denominator in both equations - me. Moreover, I'd been approaching my life as a zero-sum game. As Alex had just pointed out, meeting my own needs for a change didn't mean my family would collapse or sink into bankruptcy-level debt. There were certain parts of my marriage that might never be fixed - wasn't that what "for better or for worse" was all about? - but that wouldn't necessarily put Sanjay and me on a one-way dinghy to divorce island. And even if we did split, that wouldn't be the end of everything. It would hurt like hell, but it wouldn't erase the good times we'd had My children would still have two parents who loved them and who would not opt out of their lives just because things were hard.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“I wanted to tell myself it didn't matter. Happiness was nothing but a fleeting state-- a modern construct used to justify personal fulfillment over the greater good.
But deep down, I knew this wasn't true. To me, at least, the word happy was shorthand for a life with meaning.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“As I would quickly come to realize, having a child—and then another—was a professional liability for a person like me, which is to say a woman.”
― Camille Pagán, I'm Fine and Neither Are You