The Mad Wife Quotes

“If you, Dear Reader, have ever felt unseen, unheard, or untethered from the world around you, I hope this story reminds you that your existence, your presence, your voice, your heart is enough. You deserve to be here. You always have. Take care of yourself and each other.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Of course, sometimes we forget that dreams and nightmares are two sides of the same coin”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Life is a continual process of letting go, but this I choose to hold on to. This I will never surrender, because I remember. Always and forever, I remember.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“They say women forget, but we don’t. We tuck away the throes deep in our bones, forever carrying the memories in the recesses of our bodies.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Sometimes the memories we keep are the ones we’d rather forget. But they have a way of finding us in the night, whispering along the wind so we remember.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“All of us are evolutions of ourselves, changing over time as the calendar moves forward. Who we are when we leave this world is not who we were when we entered.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“How long had that tree stood there? How much had it seen? How many seasons had come and gone as it stood rooted in that one place, growing and dropping leaves, rebirthing and releasing year after year after year? How many times had the first beams of sunshine illuminated its languid branches and shimmered its dancing leaves, casting wavering shapes that shifted with the changing hours? I used to resist the dark places, but now I knew that the fullness of life includes all of it: the light, the dark, and the shadows that creep between.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Life is a continual process of letting go”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“And my hope moving forward is that we may all have the eyes to see the silent suffering in front of us, the ears to hear their cries, and the empathy to take their hand and let them know that they are not alone, because we are all ghosts of this mysterious realm called life.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Together does not mean sameness. He didn’t know—wouldn’t know—what it felt like inside my body and mind. He would never understand existing in a body that fought itself. He would never know the urgency to live as the clock ticked louder, faster, time suddenly having a different quality to it. He wouldn’t know what it was to be the light caught in a jar, watching the lid turn and tighten, each breath one closer to the final, last suffocating one.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Sometimes forgetting is a mercy, and recalling is a pain too deep to bear”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Stories have a way of finding us at just the right—or sometimes the most fragile—moment. This one is steeped in history, woven with grief and longing, and tangled in the complexities of the human mind. It explores the weight of silence, the ache of the unseen, and the shadows that linger in the spaces between what is known and what is lost.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“It’s surprising how much you can miss someone you’re not sure ever really loved you.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“I suppose it was in the darkness of the morning before the sun peeked over the horizon that I first came to believe that a home has a soul.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“sometimes we forget that dreams and nightmares are two sides of the same coin.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“The road home can be a long and winding drive, a labyrinth of memories and mistakes.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“We think we are the superior species, and yet there is so much we don’t know. Like the songs of birds. We hear the tune, but we don’t know the words. We only know what we want to hear.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“In reality, the lobotomy was medically sanctioned silencing, to stop women from voicing how, and where, and why it hurt”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Babies are blessings, they say. But what often goes unsaid is that blessings aren’t always what we expect. And sometimes when we focus on the light they bring, we miss the shadows that lurk behind.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Of course, sometimes we forget that dreams and nightmares are two sides of the same coin.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“As his body shook, I remembered something I had forgotten: Esther wasn’t only mine. She was his, too.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Through a veil of tears, I saw something I had never seen before: my mother running toward me. “Lucy? Lucy!” She kept saying my name. Each time, it echoed through me, reminding me of who I had been, as if calling me back to myself as I came home.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Please, Henry, believe me. I know what I saw.” Without hesitation, Henry mumbled the last words we would speak to each other on the drive that day: “Like how you saw Esther?” His words pierced my heart like shards of glass, splintered daggers of a truth I couldn’t yet come to terms with.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Yet how well did that parenting work out? He’d still grown up to make mistakes. He’d married me, after all.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Marriage has ways of dismantling certain measures of privacy, whittling down the walls of modesty over the years.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“I had been grateful when he asked me out, when we went steady, when he proposed, and when we walked down the aisle. I was always thankful. What he didn’t realize was that I wanted more than a dishwasher. I wanted him to understand that without me having to tell him.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Sometimes forgetting is a mercy, and recalling is a pain too deep to bear.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“Henry was the all-American boy, brimming with optimism and a can-do attitude. Hatti was the ideal mother, caring for everyone, sometimes at the expense of herself. Nora was as funny as a sitcom and beautiful to boot. Every man’s dream and we all knew it. Her husband, Dennis, was the restless yet adoring spouse, overcompensating for his wandering eye. And I could make impressive salads.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“An illusion may have been lifted the day the empty blanket fell to the floor, but in the shadow moments of the night, she calls to me again. I am no longer haunted by it. Instead, I embrace those moments because they belong to only us. No one else needs to know about them. No one needs to know about those times when she is with me, when we are together, when we step into those liminal moments of dormiveglia that pull us into each other’s presence across space and time, and what some may even consider sanity.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife

“If you find the pages growing heavy, if the emotions press too hard against your heart, please know you have permission to set the book down. Step away, take a breath, and return only when you’re ready. Stories will wait. May this one meet you in your time.”
― Meagan Church, The Mad Wife