On the Savage Side

by Tiffany McDaniel

All the roads here are not graveled in rock, girls, but with the woman’s scars, because only a woman’s scars are strong enough to bear something driving over them, again and again.”

“A witch is not a pointy hat or a broom or warts. A witch is merely a woman who is punished for being wiser than a man. That’s why they burned her. They tried to burn away her power because a woman who says more than she’s supposed to say, and does more than she’s supposed to do, is a woman they’ll try to silence and destroy. But there are some things that not even fire can destroy. One of those things is the strength of a woman. Don’t you want to be a woman like that? A woman with power?”

“Power is not only physical. It’s not some muscleman lifting all the weights. It’s much more than that. It’s being smart. It means you endure.”

“It’s not that we disappear, it’s how we find ourselves that matters.”

Who do you tell about the demons when the demons are the ones who you tell?

Addiction is a thief. It steals the minutes from the day. The color of the sky. It steals the hero from the story, the leaves on the trees, the answer to the question, Who am I? The thief doesn’t go completely away because you’ve stopped holding the needle to your arm. Sobriety is just a better hiding spot for the minutes of the day, the color of the sky, the answer to the question, Who am I?

A daughter is a woman lost at sea. A mother is the one who saves her. But if she’s not there, the daughter will always be lost.”