Friends with Secrets Quotes

“Motherhood was only easy if you did it the wrong way.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“When you’ve grown up poor, you can never have enough money to make you feel like you have enough money,”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“School-supply shopping was a treasure hunt where you paid $100 to participate and the prize at the end was unfocused anger and a gigantic headache.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“I tried my best to take care of you girls. All them feminist ladies think men are exploiting us.” She opened the door and winked. “But I’ve got six million in the bank that says we’re exploiting them.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“But no benchmarks of excellence existed in motherhood, and she received no recognition”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“Paradoxically, she’d been kinder to Josh, and more patient with the kids, even though she’d been insanely busy, because she’d been happy.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“superantioxidant kale, carrot, and blueberry smoothie.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“But no benchmarks of excellence existed in motherhood, and she received no recognition for surpassing or even meeting these invisible standards. God did not reach down from heaven and mark the worthy. Instead, judgment rained down from grandparents, education experts, parenting columnists, in-laws, dentists, and strangers on airplanes. But the harshest judgment came from the endless whisper of self-reproach from within. It came on long days when she fell short of the invisible mark in some small or large way, failing the people she loved with a love so pure and primal that it took her breath away.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“But you weren’t an English major?” “I wanted to be,” she said. “But I was terrified of being poor.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“The girls I told you about is up here.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“item”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“stable, happy place where the adults made everyone feel safe and loved. That’s all she’d ever wanted too.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“She wasn’t that kind of person, of course. But maybe she would become that kind of person if she bought gel pens and a new planner with stickers that said Dentist Appointment! and Vacay! in enthusiastic letters shaped like margarita glasses. Or if she created a Family Organization Command Center with rustic chalkboard calendars from Pottery Barn. She just needed to download an app, or find a planner she actually remembered to use, or read the right book about decluttering and organization, possibly involving color-coded chore charts and sticker incentive systems for the children. But she could change, if she tried hard enough. She would change.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“I love you, Josh. I hope you know that.” “I love you too,” he said, leaning in for a kiss. “And now you have to help me with these cuff links. I haven’t worn a tux since my senior prom.” Chapter Forty-Nine AINSLEY A rainbow of evening gowns filled the hotel ballroom, punctuated by the somber jackets of men in black tie. People checked the massive seating charts displayed on easels at the back of”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“Her knowledge of sports consisted of phrases like “Well, Greg, how about those Nationals” as a transition to the sports segment when they came out of a commercial break.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“He looked like a constipated Teddy Roosevelt,”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“The why is always more compelling than the what.” Find a better way to tell it.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“I love you. Everything you are. Everything you were. Everything you’ve become. All of you. Forever.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“How had she acquired all the trappings of adulthood when she did not know all the things adults were supposed to know?”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“Why were women expected to both give birth and remember to buy No. 2 pencils?”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“In twenty years as a TV anchor and reporter, Nikki had never missed a deadline. Never. Not once.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“She wasn’t that kind of person, of course. But maybe she would become that kind of person if she bought gel pens and a new planner with stickers that said Dentist Appointment! and Vacay! in enthusiastic letters shaped like margarita glasses. Or if she created a Family Organization Command Center with rustic chalkboard calendars from Pottery Barn.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“blessing. As her friend Evangelical Heather always said, motherhood was only a short season in a long life.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“She wanted to gather them into her arms and pour a lifetime of experience into their minds, to protect them from their own unlined faces and yearning to be loved.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“sofa.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“A strange revelation washed over Ainsley, as though the universe suddenly pulled back a curtain, making visible a dimension she hadn’t seen before, a place where a benevolent power moved people like chess pawns, placing them on the right square at the right time, in a position to help their fellow humans.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“Motherhood was only easy if you did it the wrong way. She knew that from watching her own mom, who hadn’t even bothered to feed them regularly.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“Did the universe hand out perfect sisters as compensation when it meted out neglectful, drunken mothers?”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“Blue folders with prongs, red folders without prongs, eight washable markers (not the ten pack), and four highlighters when they only came in packages of three. School-supply shopping was a treasure hunt where you paid $100 to participate and the prize at the end was unfocused anger and a gigantic headache.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets

“Motherhood is hard because you’re doing it the right way, did you know that? It’s hard because you are a great mom.”
― Christine Gunderson, Friends with Secrets