Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

by Clare Pooley

In her experience, most endings turned out to be beginnings in disguise.

Sometimes fate just shows you the way to go and you have no option but to follow.

“Darling, what is the point of being alive if you go through life unnoticed, without standing out and making waves?

“They want us to be small, so we have to stand tall. They want us to be invisible, so we have to be seen. They want us to be quiet, so we have to be heard. They want us to surrender, so we have to fight.”

“No woman is anyone’s ‘other half.’ We are all entire people. Completely whole, and totally unique. But sometimes when you put two very different whole people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs.

When the thing you’ve feared for so long actually happens, you have nothing left to be scared of anymore.

Your past experiences, she’d explained, are the foundations on which you build your future. Build them on pride, not shame. Denying your history leaves your house standing on sand, always in danger of collapsing.

“The only way to be guaranteed of failure, dear boy, is not to try,” said Iona. “Love is the greatest risk of all, but a life without it is meaningless.”