A Little Ray of Sunshine Quotes

“I had thought, once, that I couldn't ever be a mother because I'd passed at the chance to raise my own son. But this summer had shown me--Matthew and Monica had shown me--that being a mother wasn't one thing. It was an indefinable, eternal state of love and acceptance, sacrifice and forgiveness. And hope. Because being a mother was nothing if not hope.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“You can’t have a child and not experience terror and heartache in some way. Your little hijacker will hold you hostage for the rest of your life, and there’s no getting around that—not by placing the child for adoption, not by abandoning the child, not by being as perfect a mother as possible. Your heart, naked and vulnerable, is now in the form of another person, and your life is never completely your own again.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“Matthew, sometimes we just have to hope that things work out, because being absolutely sure of something . . . it doesn’t happen a lot.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“It’s never gonna be over, is it? Thinking about the life we might have had.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“Listen to me. I chose your parents out of more than a hundred couples, because I thought they would be best for you. I put you in their arms, literally. And it killed me. Part of me died that day. But if I could travel back in time, I’d do it again. They did a better job than I ever could have because they were adults. They wanted a child. They had jobs, a house, savings. I was seventeen. Seventeen! Not even old enough to vote! Do you feel ready to raise a child? Take care of an infant? Even if your parents would help? Do you?” He started to say something, then changed his mind. After a second, he shook his head. “No.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“In her analysis, she learned that the CFO had answered phishing emails telling him he’d just won a $500 gift card from Costco. The man made $13 million a year before bonuses. A senior chemical engineer had accepted fifty-four invitations on social media from people she didn’t know. The head of patents had been sexting with someone he met online, clicked on what was promised to be a dick pick, and unleashed a virus. All of this had been done on company computers and the corporate server. Data breaches galore. Proprietary information insecure. Financial records out there for all the world to see.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“The therapy let me grieve and find ways to cope.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“I could grow from that broken place and be better for it. A flower growing through a crack in the pavement, as it were.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“I was a person who had suffered a trauma by giving up my baby, and this recovery process was necessary.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“My shrink said I had experienced acute loss and trauma caused by placing my baby for adoption, resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“When I think of the day you were born . . . the love I felt, like nothing else in my entire life, that fierceness . . .” She gripped my hand. “The fact that you did what you did, Harlow . . . you were so strong to do that. I want to go back in time and wrap you in my arms and take care of you and tell you how much I love you, my brave, good girl.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“I want you to be proud of me for what I did, giving him to Monica and Sanjay. It was the hardest thing I’ll ever do in my life, and I have to believe it was the right thing.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“This, I told myself, was why I should date someone for a long, long time before sleeping with him. So I could know what kind of person I was letting into my life and my body. Zach was a boy; a spoiled, self-centered child in a man’s body. Not once had he asked how I was.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“Jen told me most birth mothers wanted at least some contact with the adoptive family after the baby was born. I pictured my little brother, what it would be like to say goodbye to him over and over, leaving him with someone else, his sweet little face in the window as I drove away. “I don’t think I will,” I said after a minute. “It sounds like torture for both of us, to be honest.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“The baby would be raised by committee as I tried to earn enough to cover our costs: Health care. Food. Clothes. A car seat and all the other gear.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“Well,” she said, “you know the options, honey. There’s abortion, as I’m sure you know. If you want to stay pregnant, we can get you started on prenatal vitamins and refer you to a midwife practice. If you’re considering adoption, we can recommend some great agencies.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“Rosie and I went to Planned Parenthood together. “They’ll have all kinds of information,” she said. “It’s not just for abortions.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“I hadn’t wanted my child to be seen as a mistake. An accident. I knew how too many people looked at teenage mothers, contemptuous of our carelessness, viewing us as a drain on the system.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“Because some adopted kids do. They feel like their mothers—because it’s always the mothers, since we were the ones who were pregnant—abandoned them. There’s a theory that every adopted kid is traumatized because they were adopted.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“It’s hard to know who you are when you’ve been assigned a role so young. If your identity comes from what you do for other people, who are you when you’re alone?”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“I loved my family. But as I got older, I felt myself . . . disappearing. The good child, the easy teenager, the strong student. My siblings outgrew their need for a sitter/shepherd.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“They’d cared for her, provided for her and loved her. If anything, the knowledge that she wasn’t their flesh and blood made her love them all the more. They had chosen her,”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“There were also plenty of articles about adopted kids loving their birth parents and not being tormented. Some had reasons for not wanting to find their biological family. But speaking generally, it did seem that many adopted kids wanted to meet their birth parents. Especially their mothers, who had carried them and given birth to them. It wasn’t that they were looking for a replacement. Just answers.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“I didn’t raise my child, but I was still his mother, and the fact was both indescribably precious and painful.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“Motherhood. Not for sissies.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“No one acknowledged that she was the one who supported them because a teacher’s salary would not cover the cost of living in California”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“the reality that she had to be better, smarter and faster than any man in the same position.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“He was not Monica’s biological child, and all the research said that no matter how good a mom she was, she would never be enough. Fathers didn’t seem to be so accused in the literature.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“I had a new sense of awareness now--of my own mother, of Addison and Nicole, Monica, Grammy . . . even of Grady's ex-wife. You can't have a child and not experience terror and heartache in some way. Your little hijacker will hold you hostage for the rest of your life, and there's no getting around that--not by placing the child for adoption, not by abandoning the child, not by being as perfect a mother as possible. Your heart, naked and vulnerable, is now in the form of another person, and your life is never completely your own again.

It was worth it. It was so worth it.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine

“He laughed and my ovaries frothed with eggs.”
― Kristan Higgins, A Little Ray of Sunshine