When you're having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year

This is an important lesson to remember when you're having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year.  Things will change: you won't feel this way forever.  And anyway, sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most.  I believe you can't feel real joy unless you've felt heartache.  You can't have a sense of victory unless you know what it means to fail.  You can't know what it's like to feel holy until you know what's it like to feel really fucking evil....This was when I learned...that sometimes you need to let go of everything you're clinging to and start over, whether because you've outgrown it or because it's not working anymore, or because it was wrong for you in the first place. ~ From, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You, by Kelly Cutrone

What is Family?

"What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, and the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You can't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build your world from it." ~ From the novel, Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen