Adelaide Quotes

“Pain is pain is pain...no matter how large or small your problems, your losses, your wounds--they are yours. And you're allowed to feel them. The hardest loss will always be your own.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Because if we knew, if we honestly knew the price of love was grief, we'd never do it.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“There are parts of our hearts we give away. Not lend, but sacrifice entirely. And there are some people to whom we give these pieces, knowing we'll never really get them back.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“She didn't want to die, per se, she just wanted to stop existing. Stop being.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“The thing about Adelaide is that she felt everything. Truly, everything-except the things she most needed to feel.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“How unfair, she thought. That she'd helped Rory piece himself back together, and he'd never even know she fell apart.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Remember, Adelaide. You’re allowed to take up space, too.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Sickness feels different when it takes place inside your head,”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“You forget what it feels like to have fallen apart once you've pieced yourself back together”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Maybe, the darkness isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it’s a reminder that you’re capable of turning the car around, you know? You’re capable of rerouting from a very dark, scary path back to the light. You know how to go to that dark place now, but you also know how to come out of it.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Adelaide—the girl who felt everything—had to remind herself that it was, in fact, okay to feel. That it was okay to fill her lungs with air, her tank with fuel, her brain with the chemicals it needed. It was okay to go to hell and back, to carry every ounce of light and darkness inside of her. It was okay to love herself fiercely, a little selfishly, and with intention. It was all okay.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“It’s interesting, isn’t it? How easy it is to care for something once it’s no longer ours.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Her sister Izzy had a mantra, one Adelaide had learned decades earlier: Pain is pain is pain. It was important to recognize your privilege, yes. To show gratitude, to count your blessings. But it was also important to acknowledge and accept your pain, to understand that no matter how large or small your problems, your losses, your wounds—they are yours. And you’re allowed to feel them. The hardest loss will always be your own.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“It was tricky to explain how much light and darkness could exist in the same setting”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“The thing about Adelaide is that she felt everything. Truly, everything. She cried during documentaries, while reading books, when royal babies were born. She cried when she was happy and when she was sad and when the world felt like it was all just too much and her face was on fire and the only way to cool it down was to cry, cry, cry, cry, cry. It often felt selfish and irrational. She knew she was so lucky, so blessed. That there was no reason to cry. It didn’t matter; she would cry anyway.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“She thought about the way falling for Brennan felt like curling up by the fireplace, drinking hot tea, warming her bones and her heart and her soul with each metaphorical sip of his company.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Just remember, she said. You run yourself ragged for other people, Adelaide. You deserve someone who’s going to show up for you, too. Yeah?”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Her heart didn’t break once. It had broken multiple times over the last year—over the last decade, really—and each time she’d started to put the puzzle back together, to reconstruct her heart and soul with metaphorical superglue, they would shatter again. The pieces were getting smaller, less recognizable, more difficult to reconnect with each blow.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“You have to love fiercely, and unselfishly, and with intention, her mom said. It’s the only way.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“You forget what it feels like to have fallen apart once you’ve pieced yourself back together, what the scars feel like once they’ve healed. You know, vaguely, where they were, how the fresh cuts had stung, but you can’t run your finger over the surface anymore and say, Here. Here’s where you hurt me. The pain will eventually dull.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“You have to love freely, and unselfishly, and with intention... It's the only way”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“She was always going to jump into this lake, no matter how dark or dangerous it might turn out to be; she was too intrigued by its shimmering surface to even consider turning away. There was no world in which she wouldn’t dive headfirst in love with Rory Hughes. This was the only way.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“that people entered our lives when we needed them most.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Because if we knew, if we honestly knew the price of love was grief, we’d never do it. We’d never succumb in the first place. And once we do—once we fall in love, against our better judgment, with something or someone—we never want to let go. No matter how many dinners they miss, how many texts they ignore. None of it matters. And none of it mattered. Adelaide was never going to let go.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Pain is pain is pain. It was important to recognize your privilege, yes. To show gratitude, to count your blessings. But it was also important to acknowledge and accept your pain, to understand that no matter how large or small your problems, your losses, your wounds—they are yours. And you’re allowed to feel them. The hardest loss will always be your own.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Sickness feels different when it takes place inside your head, Adelaide thought. When the illness flows through the chemicals of your mind rather than clogged sinuses or broken bones. No illness is ever really linear. But the thing is, once you’ve gotten so sick you nearly kill yourself, your mind knows where it can go. It knows that no recesses are out of bounds or off-limits.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live. —Joan Didion, The White Album”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“It made her feel a bit nauseous, but also deeply, deeply in love.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“It's so cruel... that grief comes part and parcel with love. It's just so unfair.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“She hid this part of herself, the part that lay down in the shower and sobbed and tried to make the world make sense and couldn't.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide