“A few hours later, the five-year-old girl who'd presented with diarrhea, weight loss, and terrible stomach cramping was throwing up a foot-long worm into a bucket and looking very pleased with herself. She spoke not a word of English but kept pointing to herself then the worm then herself and grinning. Her mother, who also spoke not a word of English, was doing the same, gesticulating wildly back and forth between daughter and worm, but her face wore the opposite expression. She was not screaming in a language Rosie knew, but she understood clear as lagoons anyway the mother's horror of his worm that had lately come out of her little girl. If they'd spoken the same language, Rosie would have laid her hand on the woman's shoulder to commiserate: Oh the things that hide secretly in our children, lying in wait, doing untold damage, yearning to be free. Alarming us beyond all measure.”
Source: This Is How It Always Is
“Parents often complain that their adult childhood won't let them change. Children don't want their parents to move from the home in which they grew up, or convert their old bedrooms into offices. They refuse to take their cartons out of the attic or basement and become angry at even the suggestion that their parents might show them away. We are more focused on our parents as the repositories of our childhoods, which we want to hold on to, than on the sacrifices they made for us that they might no longer want to make—such as using their own bedroom or the dining rooms as an office so we could have a bedroom.”
Source: I Only Say This Because I Love You: How the Way We Talk Can Make or Break Family Relationships Throughout Our Lives
“Not long ago, I told my son I love him so much that sometimes my chest fills up like it’s going to burst, and I have to take a deep breath. He responded, “That sounds like a medical condition.” Did I mention he’s a bit of a smart aleck?”
Source: A List of Cages
“Maybe that’s what children were - a desperate need that opened you up even if you didn’t want it.”
Source: Nothing to See Here
“A wicked child is the most beautiful thing in the world.”
Source: Nothing to See Here
“All children are amazing artists. It’s the grown ups you have to worry about.”
Source: Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
“These are the things they don't tell you about motherhood. How after a lifetime of struggling to love yourself it will be an absolute miracle to love these babies so wholly and unconditionally, sure. But also how they will love themselves the same way, at least at first, and in that maybe you will find a level of healing that all the therapy and self-help in the world couldn't get you to because you will realize at some point you must have loved yourself the very same way. Or how seeing the way they are so comfortable in their own skin, the way they strut around so confident in the fact that they are the masterpiece we too believe them to be, will make all the wok we've done trying to suck it all in or hide it or simply avoid looking at it in the mirror seem kind of silly. Because of course it is. It's against everything we were born knowing.”
Source: The Price of Admission: Embracing a Life of Grief and Joy
“Get teachers who would do anything to keep schools safe even if they come dear because children are dearer.”
Source: Wanted Back-Bencher and Last-Ranker Teacher
“Some act till they meet obstacles, others act in spite of obstacles and conquer them; but some act not, fearing the possibility of some obstacles that might arise enroute.”
Source: Inward Journey
“Like a loving parent who watches their child learning to walk, the Divine is the ultimate parent letting us experiment, fall down, hurt ourselves, cry, get back up, and try again. God allows us to learn even when it may hurt, yet we are never abandoned.”
Source: The Flower of Heaven: Opening the Divine Heart Through Conscious Friendship & Love Activism