The Seven Day Switch Quotes

“It’s like that hoary Robert Frost poem, but without the false dichotomy: Two paths diverged in our woods, and because we are women, and women’s choices change dramatically with every single generation, both paths were less traveled by. And because there is no one way to have a family, no instruction book, and no trustworthy set of rules (and, trust me, I’ve looked), it is likely that both paths are just a little bit wrong and just a little bit right, and which one we take is simply a matter of luck and happenstance.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“you can have it all, as long as you don’t ever want time to enjoy having it all.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“They are human throw blankets.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“It’s not the stuff I do that gives my life meaning. It’s the people I do it for.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“How much we all give up, we mothers. How much we willingly hand over. Our bodies. Sleep. Sometimes safety. Often passion. And, of course, our dreams. We’ll give up our very dreams, if that’s what it takes to see to theirs.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“In every fundamental love relationship, we ask our partners to be both solid as a rock and thrillingly fun at the same time, and it’s utterly unreasonable when we get annoyed that they can’t do both.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“When you are home with your kids constantly, you forget to be all there sometimes. There's no urgency about the quality of the time you spend together, because there's so much quantity. But sometimes, when you can get grounded and present with them, they pick up on it right away, and they respond differently.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“Because my mom always said people can’t hate you if you apologize for their problems. It sounds a bit codependent, but my mom worked for some real jerks in her life to keep us kids in shoes and socks, and she knew a thing or two about going along to get along. She often told me a quick surrender will take all the wind out of an angry person’s sails and make them notice how rude they are being.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“pink sangria. Then I start assembling the recipe. It’s easy as pie: two bottles of eight-dollar rosé, the zest of an entire lime, a pint of muddled organic raspberries, and the tiniest splash of this very special artisanal birch-sap vodka”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“Everyone’s got people when they’re patient and they keep looking.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“A line that exists for reasons I cannot understand. A line across which Wendy’s life refuses to acknowledge the meaning of mine.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“As the lawyer mom helpfully reminded me a few days ago, we are not living in a community property state, so it’s best to “keep up with your waxing and keep things interesting.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“I try to parse her round-shaped words into something I know how to respond to.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“I mean, what exactly can the Mom Squad say about me? My husband is hot? My son is pasty? I can live with that.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“impossibly low swing while you stand there hunched over, staring into space, begging yourself not to look at your watch yet because zero time has passed in the last seventeen hours; it is the same exact time it was when you arrived at that park, before your butt was wet with something smelly and before you put your hand on a fireman’s pole covered with bird poop, and before someone else’s child sneezed directly into your face. Time stands still when you are a stay-at-home mom, and working moms are always saying, Oof! Where did the day go? and I am always thinking, It did not go. It will never end. I will never get to the part where I sink into a comfy chair with a glass of wine, because this is the longest day of my life. Until tomorrow. So yes, I’m very glad to be sitting in Wendy’s pretty reclaimed-warehouse office with gorgeous architectural details and story-and-a-half paned windows looking out over one of the cutest, busiest hot spots in the city. Wendy has a fancy ergonomic chair and a sit-to-stand desk. Here at her workplace, people care if her body is properly aligned and healthily engaged. They care if she is comfortable. Sometimes Anna Joy comes into our bedroom in the middle of the night,”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“would never, ever say it to their face—as mentioned, we are way above the Mommy Wars. But still. We think they have it easier. Every day while we are living our lives of servitude, they go to a place, in real clothes, where they are paid to sit comfortably among adults and think entire, complete, punctuated thoughts. Often this place has free coffee round the clock and cake on their birthdays. Yes, work is work, and no, not every day is a joyfest. But here is what I did not realize when I handed in my resignation at the community college and became a professional mom: if you work outside the home, for eight or so back-to-back hours every weekday, you wipe zero butts that do not belong to you. And to be clear, butt wiping is pretty much the easiest part of stay-at-home-mom work. I would gladly wipe ten more butts per day if it did away with even just the raisin-related tantrums. If it meant I didn’t have to stand outside in every kind of weather saying, “I see! I’m watching!” while one of a succession of toddlers does absolutely nothing of interest for the tenth time in a row. If you have a full-time job outside the home, that means that for eight solid hours every day, no one asks you to go down a wet slide or starts crying”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“will tell you right now about a suspicion that we stay-at-home moms have about working moms.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“Do I say, "Hey, girl! Just so you know, I have to live in your hot mess of a life for a week, so I'm gonna try to Mary Poppins this dumpster fire you call your existence into something safe for humans before I give it back to you?" No.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“And because there is no one way to have a family, no instruction book, and no trustworthy set of rules (and, trust me, I’ve looked), it is likely that both paths are just a little bit wrong and just a little bit right, and which one we take is simply a matter of luck and happenstance.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“maybe the reason she’s such a pain in my rear is because she’s slowly suffocating to death in her normal clothes.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“pause. “Whatever you need. Celeste, I don’t know what’s been going on this week, but I do know I love you, no matter what. When you’re ready to talk, I hope it’s me you talk to. Got that?”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“Who I wanted to be, with every bone in my body, was solely and exclusively my daughter’s mother.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“As I do, I take the pictures of what just happened, the memories just formed, and fold them up into the tiniest little square of emotion that I possibly can. I fold it again and again, until the creases are bigger than the feelings themselves. I take that tiny little square of pain and hurt and betrayal and tuck it in my sternum, just under my voice box, where it is like a block of lead I only feel when I breathe. There. It can stay there forever. I can talk around it with no problem. It doesn’t even hurt that much, as long as I never, ever think about it again.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“take that tiny little square of pain and hurt and betrayal and tuck it in my sternum, just under my voice box, where it is like a block of lead I only feel when I breathe. There. It can stay there forever. I can talk around it with no problem. It doesn’t even hurt that much, as long as I never, ever think about it again.”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch

“learned to”
― Kelly Harms, The Seven Day Switch