The Language of Flowers

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

knew right then that you felt unworthy, that you believed yourself to be unforgivably flawed.”

“Do you really think you’re the only human being alive who is unforgivably flawed? Who’s been hurt almost to the point of breaking?”

From breast-feeding I had learned the dangers of throwing myself fully into something and risking a complete collapse.

If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously, as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.