Death of a beloved flattens and dulls everything. Connections do not adhere so closely, and important events lose some of their glow. - Maya Angelou

I'm happy...I laugh as much as I can and cry when I have to, without apology. I think that’s happy.

This is the role of the mother, and in that visit I really saw clearly, and for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and cuddles and even mollycoddles a child, but because in an interesting and maybe an eerie and unworldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known. In Stockholm, my mother shed her protective love down around me and without knowing why people sensed that I had value.

Prejudice is a burden which confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.