#Growing

"I just want your voice aimed at me again. I want to absorb the direction of your eyes…"

"I feel a resurgence of my 6-year-old self… that little warrior, goddess of a girl reminding me of who I was when I was little, before the world got its hands on me."

"If you don't think you need to develop your personal brand, my advice for you comes in the wisdom of two road signs: STOP; DEAD END."

"I’ve always seen this in you, ever since you were a little girl — this hunger to love other people into their highest selves and it’s what has made me irreversibly and just so forever in love with you."

"Before, I wanted to say: "I found love!"But now, I want to say: "I found a person. And he belongs to me and I belong to him."

"Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?"

"Only ignorance excuses stupidity"

"I have a tongue like a rose petal, and when I say I love you, it has the fragrance of truth. My words are my garden, and I’m planting our future."

"I love him in ways that I can’t explain to other people. They don’t understand… it’s not their fault."

"I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself — my past and the kaleidoscope of mistakes, failures and wrong turns that have stacked unbearable regret upon my shoulders."

"Anything that you learn becomes your wealth, a wealth that cannot be taken away from you; whether you learn it in a building called school or in the school of life. To learn something new is a timeless pleasure and a valuable treasure. And not all things that you learn are taught to you, but many things that you learn you realize you have taught yourself."

"I know that this process of ‘me changing my life’ doesn’t just end once I set fire to this list of things I hate about myself. Tonight isn’t as much of a new beginning as it is a violent end and I know the real work hasn’t even started yet."

"Every day I’m growing as a man. I’m not growing in height, but rather I’m growing in love, which makes me seem taller than I really am."

"I look in the mirror through the eyes of the child that was me."

"My father was an electrical engineer who worked at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. When I was growing up, my mother wrote humor columns for the local paper. She was the Erma Bombeck of Murrysville, Pa."

"I want you to trust yourself, baby. Love is all that matters and you’ve always known that. You’ve known, since you were a very little girl, what your life is meant to be about…"

"I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal."

"Your personal truth is your gift to the world."

"If ever I was running, it was towards you."

"Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back. I’m going to help you forgive the things that you won’t let yourself forget."