Quotes from Laurie Frankel

You can't tell people what to be, I'm afraid," said Rosie. "You can only love and support who they already are.

I wish for my child, for all our children, a world where they can be who they are and become their most loved, blessed, appreciated selves.

Just because it's made up, doesn't mean it isn't real," said Penn. "Made up is the most powerful real there is.

Wider ranges of normal make the world a better place for everyone.

How did you teach your small human that it's what's inside that counts when the truth was everyone was pretty preoccupied with what you put on over the outside too?

For my child, for all our children, I want more options, more paths through the woods, wider ranges of normal, and unconditional love.

parenting always involves this balance between what you know, what you guess, what you fear, and what you imagine.

Rosie was also used to conflicting emotions, for she was a mother and knew every moment of every day that no one out in the world could ever love or value or nurture her children as well as she could and yet that it was necessary nonetheless to send them out into that world anyway.

All life. You are never finish, never done. Never become, always becoming. You know? Life is change so is always okay you are not there yet. Is like this for you and Poppy and everyone. The people who do not understand are change. The people who afraid are change. There is no before and no after because change is what is life. You live in change, in in between.

Who people think they are and what people think they want is not really who they are or what they want.

Dispelling fear. Taming what was scary not by hiding it, not by blocking it or burying it, not by keeping it secret, but by reminding themselves, and everyone else, to choose love, choose openness, to think and be calm. That there were more ways than just two, wider possibilities than hidden or betrayed, stalled or brokenhearted, male or female, right or wrong. Middle ways. Ways beyond.

Our first concern is his happiness of course; but not just today." Because it wasn't that simple, was it? Raising children was the longest of long games.

There are few children more treasured than ill-behaved ones who belong to someone else.

That's what all stories want. They want to get out, get told, get heard.

If you give all your worry to one thing, soon you'll realize that's way too much and worry about it less and you'll feel more in control of it for keeping it at the front of your mind and that will help you worry less too.

You have to help him see that if he's disappearing from the world, that's too high a price to pay for fitting in. He has to see how 'You shouldn't push even though you want to' isn't the same as 'You shouldn't wear a dress even though you want to.

They say it is what you never imagine can be lost that is hardest to live without.

Sometimes when I remember we aren't the same person, it shocks me.

Not much of what I value in our lives is easy.

These kids, her multitudes, they could grow up. They could move Away. They could—they would—become new, become changed, become actual adult people in progress, people she wouldn't recognize, people she could not imagine. People remade. They would undergo miracles. They would transform. They would make magic. But they were her story, hers and Penn's, so however wide they wandered, they would always be right here.

Leaving wasn't weak, and it wasn't giving up. It was brave and hard fought, a transition like any other, difficult and scary and probably necessary in the end. Fighting it only delayed the inevitable.

All life. You are never finish, never done. Never become, always becoming.

The real trick is you have to forge your way straight ahead through the trees where there is no path.

For the moment's all there is, my darling.