Committed

by Elizabeth Gilbert

An infatuation-based affair is a sanity-free zone, where misconception has no limits and where perspective finds no foothold.

Childless women have always been particularly essential in human society because they often take upon themselves the task of nurturing those who are not their official biological responsibility—and no other group does this to such a large degree. Childless women have always run orphanages and schools and hospitals. They are midwives and nuns and providers of charity. They heal the sick and teach the arts and often they become indispensable on the battlefield of life. Literally, in some cases. (Florence Nightingale comes to mind.) Such

We yearn for private intimacy even though it’s emotionally risky. We yearn for private intimacy even when we suck at it. We yearn for private intimacy even when it’s illegal for us to love the person we love. We yearn for private intimacy even when we are told that we should yearn for something else, something finer, something nobler.