“I’m afraid I’ll never leave a mark on anybody.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever been worried about you just because?”

Maybe some kinds of trauma can’t be revisited—and some need to be.”

is that when someone leaves, all you can do is leave a window open for them so that one day, if they choose, they can come back.”

She couldn’t fathom what it must be like to be so loved and to be so sure of that love that you would fight tooth and nail to protect it, but she was incredibly glad that these girls had that.

“It might seem sometimes that all we are is odd and different, but the truth is, we’re amazing. We’re part of the earth below us and the sky above us. Our veins echo the patterns of rivers and roots. There’s sunlight and moonlight in our bones.”

She had once believed she would never have a family, but here they were, too.

It’s a leap of faith to love people and let yourself be loved. It’s closing your eyes, stepping off a ledge into nothing, and trusting that you’ll fly rather than fall.

She hadn’t understood how exhausting and heartbreaking it had been to hide such a big part of herself all these years, to reshape and contort herself into something more acceptable. She hadn’t realised just how heavy her mask had been until she’d discovered what it was to live without it.