Admitting you had a problem was the first step - everyone knew that - but admitting you had a problem also left you open to the possibility that maybe you couldn't fix it
Sometimes—a lot of the time—it felt like her skin no longer fit her, and her body was only a collection of flaws to be fixed or at least disguised, an endless source of despair.
Grabbing for the last loaf of bread or gallon of milk or four-pack of toilet paper, as if everyone’s snow-day plans included French toast and diarrhea.
You should be concerned about the state of your soul, not the state of your bank account.
When I took Psychology 101, the professor taught us about random reinforcement. Put threegroups of rats in three separate cages, each equipped with a bar. The first group of rats got a pellet every ti...
Things happen, and you can’t make them un-happen. You don’t get do-overs, you can’t roll back the clock, and the only thing you can change, and the only thing that does any good to worry about, is how...
She hoped that things had changed, but she knew that they hadn’t changed enough. All the demonstrations, all the consciousness-raising, all the protests, all the pickets, all the books she’d read, all...
If she married a man, she could let him plan, let him push, let him maneuver; and the world they inhabited would welcome them. They would always have a place. It would be easy, and Jo was so tired.
I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you.
I would write my way out of my heartbreak, write my way to a happy ending . . . and, if, by the end of it, I had a story that other people might like, that happy ending might be the publication of an...
I wished that my job was baking muffins in a muffin shop, where all I'd have to do was crack eggs and measure flour and make change, and nobody could abuse me, and where they'd even expect me to be fa...
I had read all the books, from The Highly Sensitive Child to Raising Your Spirited Child. We’d learned about how to avoid overstimulation, how to help Ellie through transitions, how to talk to her tea...
How do you find happiness in a body like yours...like mine? How do you find courage to follow anything anywhere if you don't feel like you fit in the world?
How could I live a life where the person who’d built and experienced and created it alongside me, the person who’d seen me in a hundred different moods, at my highest, at my lowest, in the middle of a...
Anger surged inside her, and Bethie tried to push it aside. I could have this, if I wanted it, she told herself. She could starve herself thin again, cut her hair, find a guy, buy a little house in a...
With motherhood and marriage there was no finish line, no hour or day or year when you got to say you were through. Life just went on and on, endless and formless, with no performance evaluation, no r...
This is so much harder than I ever thought it would be...because the thing is, even if you're just working part-time, your boss is going to expect a full week's worth of work, no matter how understand...
They wouldn’t have believed me, and if they had they would have wanted me to explain. And I had no explanation, no answers. When you’re on a battleground, you don’t have the luxury of time to dwell on...
There are friends who tell you, Someday you’ll laugh about this. Susan’s my best friend because, with her, someday is always now.
She knew she’d be hearing that voice, those words, on an endless loop in her brain, maybe for the rest of her life.