Quotes from Kristan Higgins

Sometimes, your life shatters when you least expect it. Car accidents, lost pregnancies, divorce, loneliness. People you loved could disappoint you, and other people came through when you never expected it. And sometimes, happiness just rains down on you out of the clear blue sky.

In a way, Emerson's list taught me something I hadn't anticipated. You didn't get everything in life. I'd always thought if you worked hard enough and tried to be your best self, the universe would listen. But it didn't always. As my grandfather used to say, God was not a grocer; you didn't hand him a list and have him go through it, checking off everything you'd asked for. You could be fulfilled just the same...and you were also allowed to be sad once in a while.

Sometimes you never know how much those little things matter.

Maybe we never get over what happened when we were little.

That was the shitty thing about divorce. You lost that whole other family, that whole world.

She was a typical tough Maine woman—able to shoot a deer, dress it and make venison chili in the same day.

After all, how many days like this do you get in life? How often can you really be free, alive...weightless? That's the problem with perfect moments. They end.

the reality that she had to be better, smarter and faster than any man in the same position.

No one acknowledged that she was the one who supported them because a teacher's salary would not cover the cost of living in California

Motherhood. Not for sissies.

WAKE UP around three in the morning, knowing immediately that Colonel has died.

Then they'd looked at each other, realization

I don't get it, guys, I continued. I'd want to date me. Why is it so hard for me? I'm wicked fun, I dress nicely, I'm friendly... I'd love to date me. Wouldn't you?

I want you to be proud of me for what I did, giving him to Monica and Sanjay. It was the hardest thing I'll ever do in my life, and I have to believe it was the right thing.

Don't let me be your life's tragedy. Let me be one of the best things that ever happened. One of the many best things that ever happened to you. Let our time together be a beautiful, happy time in your life that came to an end, but led to more happiness, more love.

When I think of the day you were born . . . the love I felt, like nothing else in my entire life, that fierceness . . ." She gripped my hand. "The fact that you did what you did, Harlow . . . you were so strong to do that. I want to go back in time and wrap you in my arms and take care of you and tell you how much I love you, my brave, good girl.

Thank you," she whispered against his mouth. "Thank you for putting up with me." He kissed her again, then rested his forehead against hers. "You know how it is, Jess," he said, smiling. "Anything for you.

Peopling was hard. It was worth it about half the time, but it took a lot out of him.

All the misery of being a fat teenager in America, trying so hard to be invisible, quiet, not to draw attention to myself.

You can't have a child and not experience terror and heartache in some way. Your little hijacker will hold you hostage for the rest of your life, and there's no getting around that—not by placing the child for adoption, not by abandoning the child, not by being as perfect a mother as possible. Your heart, naked and vulnerable, is now in the form of another person, and your life is never completely your own again.

He laughed and my ovaries frothed with eggs.

He was, and is, and always would be, the love of her life.

I didn't raise my child, but I was still his mother, and the fact was both indescribably precious and painful.

Adopt a Brownie Troop. Memoir classes. Field trips and blood drives.