I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you. - Lois McMaster Bujold

One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.

All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete, or a scientist, or an artist, or an independent business creator. In the service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe — if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again.

“I am not schizoid.” Miles bit off. “A little manic-depressive, maybe,” he admitted in afterthought.
Galeni’s lips twitched. “Know thyself.”
“We try, sir.”