In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir
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Read between July 6, 2020 - February 10, 2021
11%
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I didn’t have the emotional resources to always care about what was wrong or right or fair—I just wanted things to be bearable.
17%
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But still, I felt things too deeply—the hiding never lessened the intensity of all that feeling.
17%
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But all that hiding, all that silence, makes you vulnerable in a different way.
40%
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I couldn’t fathom the difficulty of mothering a girl, with so much unhealed trauma around the experience of being a woman.
50%
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One day in class, an active environmentalist I was often around stated that smokers shouldn’t receive socialized health care if they ended up with cancer. I don’t know how the conversation got to that point. It often seemed like so many of my friends couldn’t distinguish between their values and logical thinking.
50%
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I knew the risks. My mother’s choice to marry a monster, her choice to have his children—was it a choice? Should we have been saved? Aborted? Would it have been better to never have been born at all?
54%
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What happens when one forgives? I was always so eager for the person I forgave to love me, I couldn’t hold anyone accountable for their choices.
54%
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I just wanted everything to be okay, and I didn’t have the wherewithal to think of myself in that equation, of my own right to be okay, to approve of the way others treated me.
56%
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So much of my adult life would oscillate like this: some form of spiritual focus and hope, a good job or loving friends and maybe a boyfriend or husband who adored me for a time; next, a darkness.
56%
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Then I would run to the light, to music and hiking in forests, to poetry and moderation, but the darkness inside me always drew me back, away from the flirtation with normalcy and stability.
75%
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There are so many of us trying, striving through our imperfections to be good. But what would I tell a daughter who calls me one night, excited about the young man she has met, who knows so much about everything and is a feminist who really cares about women’s rights, Mom? I think I would tell her to see how he reacts when she doesn’t please him, when she doesn’t follow his unspoken rules. When she is too loud or accidentally breaks his favorite cup. When she wears something he doesn’t like or gets excited about something he doesn’t care about. Does he talk out both sides of his mouth? I’d ...more