Marie > Recent Status Updates

"...love doesn't care about whether or not you have your shit together, or if you're a grieving mess. Love doesn't care if you're anxious or depressed, or drowning in everyday life. Love just loves."

"Having your shit together is not a prerequisite for love."

"I've built up this thick wall that keeps me from feeling the pain, but it also kept me from feeling anything. Something inside that wall rattled loose when I met Henry, at first a slow trickle, then a stream, now a tsunami."

"It's like my grief has tethered me to myself, the walls of sadness like shrink-wrap surrounding all sides of me until I can barely breathe. Any movement I make, any step forward or back, is too painful. The smaller and smaller my world becomes, the more daunting it is to try to move out of the hurt."

"...I'm exhausted. Not just from pretending, but from the pain itself, from the effort of holding it in, of trying to make my grief more palatable."

"And somewhere past the initial shock waves of hurt and grief is fear. I've lived my whole life without a dad, but I've always had my mom. She's been there through everything. She is - was my best friend, my confidant, my cheerleader...And now that she's gone, I don't know how to do life without her. I don't know how to live without my vital organ."

"Since the accident, I've had a hard time enjoying things the way I used to. The sun never feels as warm, colours not as bright. Even music and movies and books I used to love have lost some of their flavour, as if I'm moving through a blander, less vibrant version of the world - a world without my mom in it. A world I'm no longer sure how to navigate."

"Grief became a kind of shadow I couldn't get out from under. A hand on my throat, slowly tightening its grip."

"...I feel like her death has hit me much harder than everyone else. Like I've lost a vital organ while everyone else is nursing a few cuts and bruises."

"I glance up and down the table, surveying the faces of my siblings and grandparents, wondering if anyone else feels it too. The sharp edges of grief. The sting of her absence. But everyone looks excited, happy even, and I can't help feeling like all the air is evaporating from my lungs."

It's Take a Leap cover reveal day! 🥳 Visit my profile, search the title, or pop over to my Instagram @marielandry.author to see the gorgeous, dreamy cover! 💜

"Isobel, I love you wholly. I love you eternally. I love you so dearly it frightens me. I fear I could not live without you. I could see your face every morning upon waking for ten thousand years and still look forward to the next as though it were the first."

"Seeing a confession of love in his eyes was nothing like hearing it declared aloud. This was a look that would make time stop, if it could. Soft and sharp at once, an aching tenderness edged with sorrow, naked proof of a heart already broken." Gaaaaaah

"This must be what the awakening of spring was like, I thought. I was alive in a way I had never been before, in a world that no longer felt stale but instead crackled with breathless promise."

GAH this is so good! I just want to sit and read all day.

Chapter 25 with the dick pic - I am HOWLING
One of the funniest things I've ever read

"We must know how to design our lives. We are all artists, and each day is a canvas."

"And what did I need to know? First and most obviously was that I had all the inner resources I needed to effectively deal with my situations. And secondly, I needed to realize that I was an artist. Not the one who paints letters about Paris. The artist who is the head honcho creative director of her own life."

"...the only way to happiness is to find people with whom you can eat, drink, and laugh. That is all. That is everything...And a spoonful of Nutella each day makes life more beautiful. It's an antidepressant."