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My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

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I always wondered why God was supposed to be a father," she whispers. Fathers always want you to measure up to something. Mothers are the ones who lov...more

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We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far eas...more

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It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A chil...more

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[I] don't think I was trying to kill myself. I just wanted to hurt, and understand exactly whay I was hurting. This made sense: you cut, you felt pain...more

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I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-n...more

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Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they don't want their kids... but when you look more closely, you realize that they're doing those...more

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Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late that we've wounded the people we are trying to protect.

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Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deed...more

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It's the child who's supposed to cry, and the mom who makes it all better, not the other way around, which is why mothers will move heaven and earth t...more

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It's never the differences between people that surprise us. It's the things that, against all odds, we have in common.

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Children are supposed to go to school, play on swing sets, skin their knees.

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Logically, I understand that it wasn't Edward's fault my family fell apart after he left. But when you're eleven years old, you don't give a flip abou...more

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Taking a deep breath, I shake my head and find Judge staring at me. "Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans," I say. "Once you leave the l...more

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I used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyw...more