Fragments, kept like pressed flowers.
Lines we overheard in the Circle and could not stop thinking about. Shared with permission. Names changed or shortened. A commonplace book of what women say when they finally feel allowed to say it.
On being a mother
"I love them and I am also disappearing."
"I think I have been performing motherhood since the day they put her in my arms."
"The version of me my children will remember is not the one I was hoping to introduce them to."
On exhaustion
"I am not tired. I am depleted. There is a difference and I am only just learning it."
"My rest looks like hiding. I want to learn what rest looks like when I am not hiding from anything."
"Sometimes I cry in the car because it is the only place no one is asking me a question."
On coming back to yourself
"I forgot what I liked. Not what I should like. What I liked."
"I am trying to listen to the part of me I used to call dramatic."
"I think I have been waiting for permission from someone who isn't coming."
On the room itself
"I didn't realize how much of my life I was holding alone until I put a piece of it down here."
"I have not felt this seen in a room with a door, let alone a room without one."