I'll Show Myself Out Quotes

“A mother's heroic journey is not about how she leaves, but how she stays.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Motherhood leaves you inevitably and profoundly changed; you can be similar to who you were - maybe? - but you'll never be the same.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“But becoming a mother alters every ince of your body, your routine, your soul, your heart.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Sometimes we are too close. Sometimes our creativity, our relationship, our book, our project, this thing we are working so hard on, needs space from us. It’s okay, sometimes, to not just ask for help, but to acknowledge that in fact help might be the only answer. The truth is, there will be times where you actually must step away from what you love in order to love it right, when your absence might be more helpful than your presence. There will be times when in fact the right thing to do is to say, “I need a break.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“When I was making my initial rough crossing into motherhood, I didn’t want a wizard or a magic person or some elf queen, I just desperately needed help from women who knew exactly what the fuck they were doing, because I definitely did not.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Because now I know that everything bad can happen, and I am responsible for it not. Because sometimes I feel like keeping us from dying will kill me. Because I am on board, and I'm exhausted. Because I am on board, and I will never be used to being the driver. I still feel like the baby; like I could just cry this whole ride and never stop till we get home.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“I do feel I must point out, accepting that perhaps I am wrong on this but I don’t think I am, that there just doesn’t seem to be an equivalent male phenomenon wherein a notable portion of men in their fifties, post divorce, just get on Grindr and end up with a dude. I know we women aren’t perfect and fer sure we take energy to be in a relationship with, OF COURSE. Of course. But I’m just saying, maybe the undeniable truth is, life is easier with a wife.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“The truth is that motherhood is a hero’s journey. For most of us it’s not a journey outward, to the most fantastic and farthest-flung places, but inward, downward, to the deepest parts of your strength, to the innermost buried core of everything you are made of but didn’t know was there.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“We are alive.“
"One day we will die.“
"Some things will be the same, and some things will be different.”

In the dark I think, What if, when we die, everything is different and nothing is the same? (That is a terrifying thought.)

Then I think, What could I write that would make us all feel better?

Maybe:“Everything will be different, except for the love. The love will be the same.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“I am mourning the loss of the time in my life when I could endlessly indulge in the joyful selfishness of an afternoon doing nothing but looking at art. Just exploring the relationship between myself and someone’s vision of beauty”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Even though I’m home all the time, I rarely feel at home.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“here I am, alive, writing this, and here you are, alive, reading it, which means our mothers did what heroes do: they kept us all alive to tell our own tales one day. And what I can tell you is that so much of the heroism of motherhood is the ability to swallow the sword. To swallow the pain and frustration and keep everything inside.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Is it really possible that my trip to buy Nom-Noms is part of a meaningful narrative, a hero’s journey? In trying to process it, I wonder why I’ve felt such inner resistance to accepting that anything I do as a mother might actually be a page in a book. And really, it doesn’t take long to connect that feeling to the fact that in popular culture, at least in America for the past forever years, what mothers do is seen as so unremarkable it’s not just an unimportant story but not even a story at all.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“he truth is that motherhood is a hero’s journey. For most of us it’s not a journey outward, to the most fantastic and farthest-flung places, but inward, downward, to the deepest parts of your strength, to the innermost buried core of everything you are made of but didn’t know was there. And what I’ve learned is that there’s a reason motherhood as a story is so infrequently told.

It’s because, for so many people, our safest, sweetest, earliest memories are of nestling in our mother’s lap, in her rocking warmth, hearing her sing as we get milk-drunk and sleepy and burrow, heavy-eyed, into the crook of her soft arm. And if you knew that your mother’s journey was, intrinsically, a hero’s journey — if that was in any way an established narrative in our culture — you’d have to accept that this memory of womb-like safety, this foundation upon which so much of our identity is built, was often just an illusion. You’d have to realize that while you were blissed out on your mother’s lap, one of those epic battles, the kind that envelops heroes as they fight their way out of a ring of fire, was raging just above your head. No one wants to believe that in the moments you felt the most peaceful, the woman cradling you so softly was shielding you from a sword that she herself was holding.

Every mother you know is in this fight with herself. The sword that hangs over her is a sword of exhaustion, of frustration, of patience run dry, a sword of indignation at how little she feels like a human when she so often has to look and behave like an animal. Mostly, it is the sword of rage: the rage and shock of how completely she must annihilate herself to keep her child alive.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“What shook me about Campbell’s words is how perfectly they describe motherhood. To begin with: a “profound dream state.” The first three months after my son was born, for sure, were nothing less than a never-ending somnambulance. And even though I was not on a secret island or a lofty mountaintop, once I became a mom, I felt in my bones that deep sense of distance and isolation, of being far away from everyone else, stranded with my new “strangely fluid and polymorphous being” — i.e., my baby. If you’ve ever had a quality hang with a baby or very small child, you know a baby is as polymorphous as it fucking gets. Infants are from one minute to the next, by turns otters, mermen, humans, wombats, and puppies.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“All of this is to simply suggest: that from the deeply protective ferocity with which we stand up for our children, we could learn a lot about standing up for ourselves. It’s one of the innumerable unexpected insights that comes from being on this whole trip, a chance power we can pick up as we continue stumbling forward, toward . . . what, exactly? Why are we doing this? What are we supposed to be getting OUT of this journey?”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Mothers, truly, who among us has not, at least once while raising our beloved precious perfect angels, suddenly found ourselves imagining, even for just a moment, that we are capable of doing unimaginable things? We don’t talk about this enough. We just live with the secret feeling of being guilty little monsters. But I believe pushing through those moments, forcing ourselves to get our shit together, is one of motherhood’s most heroic acts. It can be so fucking HARD. And yet we don’t even feel like we can talk about it.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“It’s a terrible feeling to be mad at another woman for being thinner than you. It’s terrible because it stems from an involuntary, internalized patriarchal self-loathing that just gets projected outward. Then you loop around the self-loathing track once again because you can’t control this stupid reflexive jealousy. What fun!”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Because somehow, nothing ever feels lonelier than changing, even though it is the thing we are all constantly doing. All around the world, from all walks of life, people are saying one version or another of “Mama, I’m scared.” If we don’t pause and acknowledge the fear, we miss the very stakes our hearts are rising to meet.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Giving birth to him had launched him into my orbit, but with the revolution of every passing day, my little satellite would always be inching further away from me, until the day when I would cross the very last threshold of my journey, and I would have to fully let him, and everything else I know and love, go.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Ultimately, the hope of impossible delight almost always wins out over the impossible torment. I know this because here I am, alive, writing this, and here you are, alive, reading it, which means our mothers did what heroes do: they kept us all alive to tell our own tales one day. And what I can tell you is that so much of the heroism of motherhood is the ability to swallow the sword. To swallow the pain and frustration and keep everything inside.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“And mostly—and this is the spikiest truth—it is the sword of rage: the rage and shock of how completely she must annihilate herself to keep her child alive.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“No one wants to believe that in the moments you felt the most peaceful, the woman cradling you so softly was shielding you from a sword that she herself was holding.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“The surgical mask everyone’s been fighting about wearing? That’s nothing. It’s so fucking easy. It’s the lugging around of cynicism and suspicion, the weight of being so wary all the time, that is deadly”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Perhaps because acknowledging the depth of fear that reaching the edge of the known creates within us is as much the value of any story as the final triumphs. Maybe honoring the terrifying moment before crossing a threshold, the passage of life in which we are at a between and must summon our bravest, deepest selves to move forward, is as nourishing and curative to an audience as the moment of a victorious return home. Because somehow, nothing ever feels lonelier than changing, even though it is the thing we are all constantly doing.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Being a parent is a lot like having a dream. Some of it isn’t very nice. Most of it, even when it’s ugly, is beautiful.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“I remember the one thing every new mother learns, which is that any alone time is a gift, no matter where and when it is granted to you.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“But I’m just saying, maybe the undeniable truth is, life is easier with a wife.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Maybe honoring the terrifying moment before crossing a threshold, the passage of life in which we are at a between and must summon our bravest, deepest selves to move forward, is as nourishing and curative to an audience as the moment of a victorious return home.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“homesickness isn’t about houses; it’s about that elusive sense of something else, of peace and calm and happiness and belonging and relaxation that all at some point etymologically swirled into that other word over the years: “home,”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood