What We Leave Behind Quotes

“Sometimes it’s better to let someone or something go. Release yourself from old wounds, and you will find that anything is possible and is very well within your reach.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another. -Anatole France”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“I would have liked to have held her again. If I did, she would feel all the reasons I gave her up. She’d know how much I loved her, and how I would still do just about anything to save her.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“She said that when we argue with people, sometimes we get so stuck in our own heads, we can’t be objective in our responses. She recommended that I take a deep breath and consider where the other person was coming from,”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“What makes a parent, I understood at that moment, is not so much genetics, but all the other things you give. Anyone can be a parent, but to be a mom or a dad, that takes years of giving with no thought of getting.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“My eyes lingered a little while longer on the nape of his neck, the round cheek, perfect little nose. He was an angel, for sure, an angel sent to me from heaven. I was amazed that the creation of someone unique was so universally known to all mothers.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“Jonas and I, although her birth parents, had to take a step back and allow this family, this other family, to deal with their history without outside interference. She wasn’t ours to reminisce about. She wasn’t ours to debate similarities or differences. We’d lost those rights a long time ago.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“There are people who spend years behind bars for unspeakable crimes, their physical constraints visible. Others commit sins, and although not punishable by law, their sentences are as confining as those in jail. The burden of my sins was condemning me, emotional constraint was my punishment. The lie that had sprouted out of love had turned into something that I realized might destroy an innocent child, a decent marriage, a good man. These were the nooses I carried around with me.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“I would have never gotten rid of you—that was never an option—but I also knew that I was just a kid and how could I give you the life you deserved? I wanted you in this world, and I wanted you to have everything you would ever dream of, but it wasn’t possible for me to be the one to give it to you.” She”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“What about my father?” “First, I want to explain something to you. I loved you. I loved you long before I ever gave birth to you. You were created from a love that some people never experience. I cared about your father very much, but there were reasons we couldn’t be together, reasons I still don’t understand today, but you have to know that there was always love. Whatever else we were missing, whatever it was we didn’t have to make it last, we always had that feeling between us.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“Your parents have done a terrific job with you, Michelle, much better than I might have done. You need to understand the circumstances that led me to my decision. It’s not that I didn’t love you, God, I loved you too much. Things worked out for the best. You’ll understand that better when you get a little older.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“Looking for answers distorts the truth,” I said. “It tricks you into believing you have some control over the situation. We’ll never be able to understand why bad things happen to good people, so don’t do this to yourself, Mrs. Sammler. Don’t punish yourself for things that are beyond your control.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“I liked her. It was improbable that we’d ever be friends, in the broader definition of the word, but I would have liked to have known my daughter’s mother. If friends were an option, I would have explained the reasons I had to give her up and then maybe she’d tell me why she couldn’t have kids, why they didn’t adopt more children, and what it was like the day they brought Michelle home. “I’ll”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“To see the adult version of their little girl had to be startling. Ari never resembled me as closely as this precious child did. “She’s beautiful,” I spoke, feeling the tightness in my throat. “She looks like you.” “Thank you, but I was never as pretty as she is.” “She’s a terrific kid,” she said. “You’d be very proud of her.” “You’re the one that should be proud.” “We are.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“A day did not go by without my thinking of that little girl and how beautiful she looked when they took her away from me, all wrapped up in that pink blanket. I had grieved for her long after I had grieved for her father, and yet they were so undeniably connected to one another, I’d be forever connected to him. That is why I had such a difficult time for so long and why I couldn’t trust again, open my heart, for fear of losing all the people that I cared about. That was why a memory could take me back to him at any given moment—on her birthday, when I’d hear a song on the radio, when I’d breathe.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“We don’t always leave someone we love, or forget them, or get over them all at once. Every time they hurt us and every time we cry, we’re saying a partial good-bye until the person is eventually gone. Believe me, I’m much better off now.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“Usually, people are never what they seem, only what we wish them to be.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. -Albert Schweitzer”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“Sometimes when you do something you love, the joy is great, but the pain is even greater.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“She said that when we argue with people, sometimes we get so stuck in our own heads, we can’t be objective in our responses. She recommended that I take a deep breath and consider where the other person was coming from, what baggage he carries around with him.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“Feelings are as real as actions, and their consequences can be just as dangerous”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“When you’re dealing with sickness”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“in private,” I said,”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“I had found in my husband the fairy tale prince I once dreamt about as a child. He didn’t ride in on a white horse, and he didn’t own a stretch white limousine, but he was gallant in his own simple ways, brave in the face of adversity, and loved even when love wasn’t always enough. For that, I am grateful.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“His blankie was his comfort now, and he curled the delicate blue fabric in his arms until the heaviness of the overactive day pulled him into a deep sleep.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“Why do I love you?” I answered his last query. “That’s easy, because you’re the sweetest most delicious boy in the world.” He clasped my hand in his, resting his head on my shoulder, and I kissed his forehead, happy to be there sharing in our special ritual.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen Michelle take her first few steps, and it didn’t matter that I hadn’t held her hand on the first day of nursery school. I had loved her from the day she was created, even before then, because I had loved her father so much. The promise of what she would become had always lived deep within me. To watch her in that bed was insufferable. If someone had plucked my heart out and put it there to rest, the pain would be no different.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“there’s someone we were once connected to, and we pass like strangers, and no one could ever guess that we had once meant so much to one another. It was terrifying to me how life could go on without acknowledging what I had invested in, just masking what had once been the true love of my life.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“As for me, I was as equally unprepared for a child. I was sixteen, in high school, with little to no understanding of how children operated. Besides, I had hoped that one day I could do it in the order that has always been of tradition: meet the man, get married, enjoy a few good years, and then have a baby. On the other hand, there was absolutely no possible way that I would have aborted Jonas’s baby.”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind

“The heart that truly loves never forgets. -Proverb And the good-bye makes the journey harder still. -Cat Stevens “O Very Young”
― Rochelle B. Weinstein, What We Leave Behind