“At first parenthood was as I had expected, exhausting, sometimes heinous, and occasionally divine. I held my children close enough to feel them breathe, laugh, swallow.”

“I had thought a good mother would not elicit such comments, but now I see that a good mother is required to somehow absorb all this ugliness and find a way to fall back in love with her child the n...”

“Pulling at the hem of my emotion was the creeping sense that it might well take until 2036 for this child in my arms to feel a fraction of what I already felt for her.”

“It's easy to love kids who make you feel competent.”

“And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasnt because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.”

“Pel-i-cans, their beaks hold more than their bellies can.”

“A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love,often deciphered by children”

“The ideal-worker standard and norm of work devotion push mothers to the margins of economic life. And a society that marginalizes its mothers impoverishes its children. That is why the paradigmatic...”

“When God Created Mothers"When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of "overtime" when the angel appeared and said. "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one." And ...”

“It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.”

“It didn't matter that there was a war on our doorstep. She had things to do, places to be.”

“Stranger inside me, when you are born, I will give youa closed book and ask you never to read it, never rest, never forgive a man who wants to save you.”

“A hallmark of virtuous adulthood is learning to find freedom in your work rather than freedom from your work, even when work might hurt.”

“Parenting requires a delicate balance of letting your child be your spiritual teacher while you maintain the clarity and boundaries to be her Earthly teacher.”

“Remember, nothing is ever created or destroyed. Therefore, unresolved emotional pain from childhood does not dissolve by itself. It sits waiting to be declared, and a child is the ultimate vehicle ...”