Quotes from Pamela Redmond Satran

You can't change your past, but you can change your mind about your past.

can tell you with at least 90 percent conviction that we are not doomed to repeat our mistakes—not if we've learned everything we can from them. Forgive your old self, and you can be pretty sure she will forgive you too.

Every relationship we have in our lives, whether it lasts five hours with a stranger on a plane or fifty years with our soulmate, is meant to teach us something.

Love should almost never make you cry. If you've sobbed or had too many drinks or felt your stomach knot up over a guy more than once for every month you've been together, this is not the love you were meant to have. Thank him for the lessons and move on.

But time, as I came to learn, only moves in one direction, and somewhat reluctantly, I traveled with it:

Every woman should have a youth she's content to leave behind and a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to telling it in her old age

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..... a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .... one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who lets her cry...

It's rare that I have a boyfriend- that only happens if I fall in love. I've noticed that people who are never in a relationship just to be in a relationship keep their childlike spark because they don't end up settling for things that make them unhappy, and they never feel as if they took less than what was out there for them. So for me, being single is what I do, and falling in love is the exception.

Most of us fear that in growing old, we'll become a shell of ourselves. But, of course, it's the youthful versions of ourselves that are our shells; we must leave them behind like a snakeskin. We must grow out of ourselves to grow beyond our old limits, or else risk being suffocated by the sediment of our own history.

I now believe in growing old gratefully, not gracefully. I haven't found the secret to life, or love, or eternal youth. But I do know now that youth is not the blossom but the bud, and that though one cannot always be young and wild, if you are willing to learn, to grow, to outrun the mileposts of your own wildest dreams, you can always be winsome and lucky, lovely and free.

But I have learned that love is the one area where women should give themselves a break and cut bait. Men are better at that—if a guy isn't feeling great about the relationship, he will leave and not look back. As women, we're more analytical and more accommodating. We tend to hang in there and try harder. But if you're with a dude who's texting other girls, bye-bye.

So, as women, we've got to be pretty damn amazing to realize early on that physical perfection is neither achievable nor useful, and that all that fixing can be toxic.

You know when you're in yoga and you're looking around, thinking, Wow, I wish I were that flexible, or How come she can hold that pose? Well, my friend has a saying: "Stay on your own mat." Not physically, but mentally. In life, we're all made differently: our families, our frames, our personalities and talents. Appreciate how you were made, and stay on your mat. That's where happiness lies.

It's not right to spend money you don't have to perpetuate a lie about who you are.

Making peace with my past was the first step; being grateful for it was the second. Now, at last, I can appreciate the woman those experiences created: me.

you were thirty, you were a failure," she told the audience. "And now a lot of young women think that if they aren't seriously successful before thirty, they're a failure. So I want to say to you that there is life and dreams and surprises after thirty—and forty, and fifty, and sixty, and seventy-seven! Believe me, life is one long surprise. And you can't plan it, but you can prepare.

I learned not to invest too much in a relationship before I really know how the other person feels.

Love isn't always enough. It's a hard lesson because we're raised to believe that it is—it's in every story we hear. But just because you love somebody and they love you back doesn't mean your relationship makes sense or that it's a good one for you both to be in. Having chemistry with someone is important, yes, but the most important thing is that the person you're with makes you happy.

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received was from my grandmother, who said, "A woman always has to keep something of her own, even if it's a jar of quarters." The other was from my agent, another wise woman, who told me twenty years ago: "You don't have to tell everything you know.

I always say I was one woman before his death and have been another ever since. The one before thought she could fix anything if she just worked hard enough. The woman after was forced to accept that sometimes life has plans for us and our loved ones that are far, far beyond our grasp.

no one finds a braggart wise. And once I no longer thought of listening as "waiting to talk," I began to have more meaningful conversations.

no matter how huge the changes I'd been through, I was still the same person at thirty that I'd been at twenty-seven and fifteen and nine. And would be (I can now attest to the truth of this) at thirty-eight and forty-four and beyond.

love might be forever but life was not.