IT TAKES A HELL OF A LOT MORE MUSCLE TO STAY THAN TO GO. - Andrea Gibson

When your heart is broken, you plant seeds in the cracks and pray for rain.

month into the job, I can’t look at any of the girls without seeing my baby sister’s face the first time someone hurt her on purpose. It wasn’t my sister’s grief so much as her shock that stuck with me. None of these girls are shocked by the hurt that hunts them — they expect the blade of this life to keep cutting and ask it to whittle them into someone too sharp to touch.

I BELIEVE PART OF THE VIOLENCE OF OUR CULTURE STIRS FROM THE MYTH THAT KINDNESS IS NATURAL. I DON’T THINK KINDNESS IS NATURAL. I THINK KINDNESS WOULD ONLY BE NATURAL IN A WORLD WHERE NO ONE IS HURT, AND EVERYONE IS HURT. SO KINDNESS IS WORK. KINDNESS IS OUR KNEES IN THE GARDEN WEEDING OUR BITES, OUR APATHIES, OUR COLD SHOULDERS, OUR SILENCES, OUR CRUELTIES, WHATEVER TAUGHT US THE WORD “UGLY.