Have Mother, Will Travel Quotes

“It’s a dangerous thing, to divide yourself, to break off bits of yourself until there’s no solid core. We are, after all, just the sum of our total experiences, each one lying beneath us like a brick in the foundation of a house. To be selective, to block out portions, is to destabilize the very ground on which you stand.”
― Mia Fontaine, Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

“A woman’s relationship with herself is mirrored everywhere in her life, but no place more than with her daughter.”
― Claire Fontaine, Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

“We tell our daughters we don’t trust them in a thousand ways. We don’t consciously mean to, but we steal their confidence in their own strength by stealing their pain. And their confidence in our strength by saying we aren’t strong enough to see them struggle.”
― Claire Fontaine, Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

“Claire: One of the hallmarks of a mother-daughter relationship is what I call the Zero to Sixty Factor. We can get instantly irritated at each other and just as instantly move on… Men don’t get this. Paul will say, “Girls, stop fussing,” and we’ll immediately turn and say in unison, “We’re not arguing.”
― Claire/Mia Fontaine, Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

“There isn’t a woman I know who hasn’t said they wished they’d listened to their mother… especially where the three Big Ms of women’s lives are concerned: mothering, money, and men.”
― Claire/Mia Fontaine, Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

“I could see where I’d mistaken drama and conflict for life, which meant years of living reactively instead of generatively, a life I let be determined by circumstances and the choices of others. We like to think life happens to us, but pretty much everything in your life is there because you wanted it, even if unconsciously. Results, I have learned, don’t lie.”
― Claire Fontaine, Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

“These are the kinds of regrets all women have, mistakes and missteps, paths not chosen, opportunities gone. Youth gone. Forever. And until I honestly acknowledge how this regret feels, acknowledge that I’m not okay with how some of my life went, it’s like having a fake past, and a fake present, which is surely a prescription for a fake future.”
― Claire Fontaine, Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

“Claire: Once your baby arrives, the world is no more the same than you are. Because from our very bodies we add to the collective human destiny.”
― Claire/Mia Fontaine, Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

“The world is full of instructions and advice on how to mother, in bookstores, in academia, on the playgrounds, in the media. Mothers are always examining how they treat their children, but aside from the occasional “Don’t talk to your mother that way,” or “You shouldn’t have listened to your mother,” there’s not much guidance out there for daughters.”
― Mia Fontaine, Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

“I know that for every mother, there is always the possibility of three in your relationship with your daughter. You, your daughter the way she is, and your daughter the way you want her to be. I learned the hard way ten years ago that that kind of control is an illusion and a barrier.”
― Claire Fontaine, Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

“Every culture seems to have customs to ward off evil. Italians use the curved horn, and Eastern European Jews used to say insulting things to babies, such as “Oy, such an ugly girl!” to avoid tempting the devil. America’s magic charms are private education, science camp, and SAT tutors to ward off our evil: personal failure. Mothers”
― Claire Fontaine, Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World – A Beautiful Memoir of Love and Connection