Victoria Day Quotes

A lie will raise me up, and one day another lie will bring me down.

Bad magic, Kell had called it. No, thought Lila now. Clever magic. And clever was more dangerous than bad any day of the week.

Many things led to this day, for all of us. A forgotten son, a vengeful mother, a brother with a long shadow, a strange mutation. Together, they've written a tragedy.

Are you going to babysit me every day or just until I learn my way around?" "What do you think?" "Here's to a long and happy friendship, Officer Samos." "Likewise, my lady." "Don't call me that." "Whatever you say, my lady.

I have lived with you and loved you, and now you are gone. Gone where I cannot follow, until I have finished all of my days.

His lips are on mine, hard and warm and pressing. The touch is electrifying, but not like I'm used to. This isn't a spark of destruction, but a spark of life. As much as I want to pull away, I just can't do it. Cal is a cliff and I throw myself over the edge, not bothering to think of what it could do to us both. One day he'll realize I'm his enemy, and all this will be a far-gone memory. But not yet.

Did your mom ever tell you, ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything’? She was right–and talking nicely also applies when you’re talking to yourself, even inside your head. (339)

In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility. (17)

Maybe one day the words will pour out like so many others, easy and smooth and on their own. Right now they take pieces of me with them.

Annabelle laughs. "Oh, so you think you're hot, do you?" "Girl, I got swag for days.

What a difference a day makes.

I am only human, and humans are not supposed to deal with days like today.

I’m safer than I’ve been in days, surrounded by the people I love most, and yet I’ve never wanted to cry more. For them, I hold back. I curl inward and bleed alone, inside, where no one else can see.

Mare of the Stilts died the day she fell onto a lightning shield. Mareena, the lost Silver princess, died in the Bowl of Bones. And I don’t know what new person opened her eyes on the Undertrain. I only know what she has been and what she has lost, and the weight of it is almost crushing.

It stands to reason that anyone who learns to live well will die well. The skills are the same: being present in the moment, and humble, and brave, and keeping a sense of humor. (361)

In terms of days and moments lived, you’ll never again be as young as you are right now, so spend this day, the youth of your future, in a way that deflects regret. Invest in yourself. Have some fun. Do something important. Love somebody extra. In one sense, you’re just a kid, but a kid with enough years on her to know that every day is priceless. (418)

[T[his isn’t just “another day, another dollar.” It’s more like “another day, another miracle.” (213)

Everyone was made of sounds, and August had learned hers the first day they met.

I wanted to ask you about your vision of perfection in an imperfect world, or what side of the earth calls out to you when you touch a physical globe, or maybe about your greatest heartache and how you still go on as your world continues turning, or what you do with a memory once lodged inside your bones that;s still breathing, and burning. But you're still a stranger, and I'm overly polite, so I'll ask all about your day when I'd rather know about your life.

Not much of a morning person?” “Such a useless time of day,” she said, dragging herself upright and taking the cup. “Can’t sleep. Can’t steal.

Only men can speak all day long and still think themselves silent.

Just because you’re grown up and then some doesn’t mean settling into the doldrums of predictability. Surprise people. Surprise yourself. (281)

If you inherently long for something, become it first. If you want gardens, become the gardener. If you want love, embody love. If you want mental stimulation, change the conversation. If you want peace, exude calmness. If you want to fill your world with artists, begin to paint. If you want to be valued, respect your own time. If you want to live ecstatically, find the ecstasy within yourself. This is how to draw it in, day by day, inch by inch.

I don’t know who I am, and who I’m not, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be, and I miss who I was; I miss it every day, Kate, but there’s no place for that August anymore. No place for the version of me who wanted to go to school, and have a life, and feel human, because this world doesn’t need that August. It needs someone else.

It’s probably unfair to expect the world at large, or even most people, to see us for all we are. It is essential, however, that we see ourselves for all we are. (413)

Why would you even want to be human? We’re fragile. We die.” “You also live. You don’t spend every day wondering why you exist,but don’t feel real, why you look human, but can’t be. You don’t do everything you can to be a good person only to have it constantly thrown in your face that you’re not a person at all.

As I have yet to meet a gentleman I wished to spend the rest of my days with, I would say the failure was on their part rather than mine.

Middle school is for being like everyone else; middle age is for being like yourself. (430)

[G]rowing into your future with health and grace and beauty doesn’t have to take all your time. It rather requires a dedication to caring for yourself as if you were rare and precious, which you are, and regarding all life around you as equally so, which it is. (267-268)

Life has its rhythm ad we have ours. They’re designed to coexist in harmony, so that when we do what is ours to do and otherwise let life be, we garner acceptance and serenity. (285)

We make a good team, Mackenzie Bishop.” “We do.” We do, and that is the thing that tempers the heat beneath my skin, checks the flutter of girlish nerves. This is Wesley. My friend. My partner. Maybe one day my Crew. The fear of losing that keeps me in check.

Sometimes you’ll hear, ‘People don’t change.’ This is true more often than it ought to be, but listen again: ‘People don’t change.’ It says ‘don’t,’ not ‘can’t.’ (316)

Some days, it was enough just to know that I had a packet of blades in the house. They were a cold, very sharp, security blanket.

It’s in our nature, Julian would say. We destroy. It’s the constant of our kind. No matter the color of blood, man will always fall. I didn’t understand that lesson a few days ago, but now, with Cal’s hands in mine, guiding me with the lightest touch, I’m beginning to see what he meant. I can feel myself falling.

Women are powerful, and I see them stifle this every. single. day. Stop looking to be saved and hiding your magic. Stop tossing aside your voice and valid emotions. Stop wasting your time with fake friends and chasing men like they're cures. Material things, better jobs, and other people- they won't fill your gap. Only you can do that. Life is short. Rise up and step back into your awesome, innate power. You are compassion and creative force and divine life itself. You are a Goddess.

He is not only a distraction I can’t afford but a heartbreak waiting to happen. His allegiances are shaky at best. One day he will leave, or die, or betray me like so many others have. One day, he will hurt me.

One day you men will learn to pay attention and all the world will tremble.

As much as I want to pull away, I just can't do it. Cal is a cliff, and I throw myself over the edge, not bothering to think of what it could do to us both. One day he'll realise that I am his enemy, and all this will be a far-gone memory. But not yet.

Yoga will always be transformational, even when it stops being cool. (350)

One day he will leave, or die, or betray me like so many others have. One day, he will hurt me.

It has been conservatively estimated that Victoria wrote an average of two and a half thousand words per day during her reign, a total of approximately sixty million words.

I wake up feeling like I spent the last three days in a massage parlor. My muscles are relaxed, and I feel refreshed, like I could climb Mount Everest or build an ark or cure the world of minivans.

As a society, we need to get lots more flexible about what constitutes beauty. It isn’t a particular hair color or a particular body type; it’s the woman who grew the hair and lives in the body. Keeping this in mind can only make things better. (341)

The office Halloween party was at the Royalton last week and I went as a mass murderer, complete with a sign painted on my back that read MASS MURDERER (which was decidedly lighter than the sandwich board I had constructed earlier that day that read DRILLER KILLER), and beneath those two words I had written in blood Yep, that's me and the suit was also covered with blood, some of it fake, most of it real. In one fist I clenched a hank of Victoria Bell's hair, and pinned next to my boutonniere (a small white rose) was a finger bone I'd boiled the flesh off of. As elaborate as my costume was, Craig McDermott still managed to win first place in the competition. He came as Ivan Boesky, which I thought was unfair since a lot of people thought I'd gone as Michael Milken last year. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Home Abortion Kits.

When you believe you reflect what is holy and good, you can see more that is good in every stage of your life. (319)

Oh, no. No. He's going back to her apartment in the middle of the day. He's going to try and... and... My stomach heaves. Hello, darkness, my old friend.

To be a desirable woman—the sky’s the limit. Have every surface of your body waxed. Have manicures every week. Wear heels every day. Look like a Victoria’s Secret Angel even though you work in an office. It’s not enough to be an average-sized woman with a bit of hair and an all-right sweater. That doesn’t cut it. We’re told we have to look like the women who are paid to look like that as their profession.

Dear Torina, I can't face the idea of sacrificing you to this danger. You must stay alive." He caressed her cheek. "Hear me," he went on. "Even if you feel only friendship, Torina, I've loved you since the day you helped me to my feet. I tried so hard to stop. Then I thought you were dead, and my life hurt every day.

A twenty-three-year-long study in Ohio determined that people who saw growing older as something positive lived a whopping seven and a half years longer than those who didn’t. (356)

Have you ever even been dumped before?” Mac asked. “Yeah. Victoria Hanson.” “You were seventeen then.” “Still. I’ve been dumped and it sucked.” “You got head in the library the next day.” “That’s how I grieve.

August groaned inwardly. Mind over body. Mind over body. Mind over body over bodies on the floor over tallies seared day by day by day into skin until it cracked and broke and bled into the beat of gunfire and the melody of pain and the world was made of savage music, made and was made of, and that was the cycle, the big bang into the whimper and on and on and none of it was real except for August or all of it was real except for him. . . .

The die was cast. It was a proud day for the Milligan family as I was taken from the house. "I'm too young to go," I screamed as Military Policemen dragged me from my pram, clutching a dummy. At Victoria Station the R.T.O. gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked "This is your enemy." I searched every compartment, but he wasn't on the train. At 4.30, June 2nd, 1940, on a summer's day all mare's tails and blue sky we arrived at Bexhill-on-Sea, where I got off. It wasn't easy. The train didn't stop there.

Don't you see, Owen?" "See what?" "The day's over.

• Judge less–or at least later. • Give new ideas and images a chance. • Understand that everyone has his own truth or her own. • Remember: you are not married to any belief, opinion, or ideology. • Expect to discover something delicious every day. (260)

A confession: I am not a good friend. Lyndsey writes letters, Lyndsey makes calls. Lyndsey makes plans. Everything I do is in reaction to everything she does, and I’m terrified of the day she decides not to pick up the phone, not to take the first step. I’m terrified of the day Lyndsey outgrows my secrets, my ways. Outgrows me.

But I'm hungry. I bypass the line and smile to myself when the peeps behind me mumble complaints. Telling their families and friends about "this dick in the snack line" will be the highlight of their day.

The boy was the sun in Coriane's sky. On hard days, he split the darkness. On good days, he lit the world. When Tibe went away to the front, for weeks at a time now that the war ran hot again, Cal kept her safe. Only a few months old and better than any shield in the kingdom.

These days, everyone left a digital mark. All day, every day at Colton, people were snapping photos, recording every mundane moment as if it deserved to be preserved, remembered.

Relief was what I was looking for that day, and I didn’t care how I got it. What I wanted - what I needed - was a pain that I could see and deal with. I couldn’t cope with the mess inside of me any longer, and cutting myself seemed to be the best solution. I knew that it would work. What I didn’t know was that I was about t engage in a behavior that was not just dangerous but highly, highly addictive.

What I’ve been trying to tell myself for days now. Cal is not a path I should choose or want. Cal is simply a weapon, something for me to use—or something for others to use against me. I must prepare for both.

I don't know how, but I hope you become queen one day. Imagine what you could do then? The Red queen.

When you can see your life in retrospect, the romanticism of how good things once were gives way to the reality that positives and negatives comprise every day and every decade. (235)

But let me tell ya, spend every day living only for yourself, every day indulging in little sins that aren’t that big of a deal, and one day I may be showing you the ropes in hell. Amen.

For the very first time Andrew realized that life, real life, had no connection with the way people spent their days, whose lips they kissed, what medals were pinned on them, or the shoes they mended. Life, real life went on soundlessly...ultimately there was no difference between Queen Victoria and the most wretched beggar in London: both were complex machines made up of bone, organ, and tissue, whose fuel was the breath of God.

Seven a.m. on the first day of summer vacation was, to her mind, a dangerous time to be awake. Even God had to be sleeping in.

One day he’ll realize I’m his enemy, and all this will be a far-gone memory. But not yet.

I am married to a prince who will one day be a king. Usually this is where the fairy tale ends. Stories don’t go much further than this moment, and I fear there’s a good reason for it.

When Victoria told me how intensely she hated me, I kept the Beretta aimed at her face, but heard myself say, "I don't hate you." She called me an effing liar and said, "Hate makes the world go around. Envy, lust and hate." "I stopped hating anyone the day when I realized hating can't restore to me anything that's lost.

At forty-three, I bought my first house. I’d wanted one like crazy. A house meant family, a happy childhood for my litttle girl and for the little girl self inside me. . . . I was soon overwhelmed by the upkeep and overcome by the yardwork. . . . In the bright light of closing, it was obvious: it was never a house I wanted; it was what a house symbolized to me. (254)

If you are always saying I'll do it to tomorrow, than your tomorrow will than turn into another day and so on, and so, etc. etc.

From now until the end of your days, you must lie. Your life depends on it, little lightning girl.

You know how we’re thinking about food these days, less in terms of carbs and calories than in terms of color, vivacity, and life force? We can do the same with time. Then it’s no longer about having enough of it but about infusing color and vivacity and life force into every moment. (279)

I am married to a prince who will one day be a king. Usually this is where the fairy tale ends. Stories don't go much further than this moment, and I fear there's a good reason for it. A sense of dread hung over today, a black cloud I still can't get rid of. It is an unease deep in the heart of me, feeding off my strength.

They built it so quickly. It's only been a few days since the Bowl of Bones," I murmur back. Anything louder than a whisper might shatter this fragile peace. Cal's hand stills, his palm flat against my bare skin. "Maven turned against you long before the Bowl of Bones." I know that now. I know it with every bleeding breath.

I’m safer than I’ve been in days, surrounded by the people I love the most, and yet I’ve never wanted to cry more. For them, I hold back. I curl inward and bleed alone, inside, where no one else can see.

Sure. I'll make small talk. Chit chat. Discuss the ins and outs of a "typical" day. Pass the time lightly. Say tiny things. I'm happy to tread surfaces with a smile, and will. Sometimes. Yet- when I look at you, I know there are layers. Dimensions. Collections of ancient wisdom. Roads. Stories on stories on stories. Core needs. There is humanness. This is where I light up. This is where I thrive. You can't be caged in a pool for long. Not when you're someone who wants oceans.

From that day on, his bedchamber becomes ours.

If only we had more time. One more week, or even one more day.

If you've ever tried meditation and didn't stay with it, I recommend you try it again. Some time has passed. In the interim, you may have developed the discipline of mind or the patience you were short on before. Let these qualities aid your practice. (173)

The morning was on fire as the sun rose, seemingly from the ocean depths. The great, glowing orb came to the surface and set the horizon aflame. Many minutes passed, and it floated fully into the sky to light the day and gently warm the sea below.

I don’t get why people are always trying to escape.” “Really?” said Kate. “Take a look around.” In the distance beyond August’s window, the nothing gave way to something—a town, if it could be called a town. It was more like a huddle of ramshackle structures, buildings gathered like fighters with their backs together, looking out on the night. The whole thing had a starved dog look about it. Fluorescent lights cut glaring beams through the darkness. “I guess it’s different for me,” he said, his voice taut. “One moment I didn’t exist and the next I did, and I spend every day scared I’ll just stop beingagain, and every time I slip, every time I go dark, it’s harder to come back. It’s all I can do to stay where I am. Who I am.” “Wow, August,” she said softly. “Way to kill the mood.

Our society on a whole is trained to see young women. There are proportionally far more of them on magazine covers, on TV, and in films than int the actual population. As a result, we have a citizenry taught to see the young and ignore the not-so-young. It isn’t conscious; it’s Pavlovian. (13)

They like a woman with no shame. We’re rare, you see, because we’re told to be ashamed of everything every day by everyone. Ashamed to give them what they want, ashamed not to want to give it to them. Ashamed to show our average bodies, ashamed not to have a perfect one. I have no idea how normal women date. The world seems like it’d be an unbearable place for people with real feelings.

Sometimes customizing is necessary because of an injury or the inability to do, for a short or long period, the kind of exercise you formerly did. When you're used to customizing for fun, doing it under duress won't seem like such an imposition. Either way, experiment until you find activities that make you happy as well as healthy. Choose your exercise using the same criteria you'd apply to choosing a date--that is, attractive to you and able to hold your interest for an hour.

Being authentic is the ability to make self-honoring choices and stand firmly in who we are in our core. Being true to ourselves gives us the insight and compassion to see others for who they are, not who we expect them to be. It frees us up from the judgment of ourselves and others and it gives others the freedom to be themselves as well. —Victoria J. Reynolds Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-24 NIV).

I love the way you taste and I want to pleasure you in ways you have never known,” he breathes into my ear, making me wet. “Running my tongue along every inch of your body has been flooding my thoughts for days and I promise you I would do things you never even imagined.

You wanted strength.” “I still want it,” Rhy whispered. “Every day. I wake up wanting to be a stronger person. A better prince. A worthy king. That want, it’s like a fire in my chest. And then, there are these moments, these horrible, icy moments when I remember what I did …” His hand drifted to his heart. “To myself. To you. To my kingdom. And it hurts….” His voice trembled. “More than dying ever did. There are days when I don’t feel like I deserve this.” He tapped the soul seal. “I deserve to be …” He trailed off, but Kell could feel his brother’s pain, as though it were a physical thing.

Years later the Romantic poet John Keats would complain that on that fateful day Newton had “destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to prismatic colors.” But color—like sound and scent—is just an invention of the human mind responding to waves and particles that are moving in particular patterns through the universe—and poets should not thank nature but themselves for the beauty and the rainbows they see around them.

Dad says that the world is always changing, every second of every day, and so is everything in it, which means that the you you are right now is different from the you you were when you started reading this sentence. Crazy, right? And your memories change, too. (For instance, I swear the teddy bear I had growing up was green, but according to my parents it was orange.) But when you take a photograph, things stay still. The way that they were, is the way that they are, is the way that they will always be.

It is a small thing, yes, but on small things hinge the turning of the world. Very rarely does the opportunity come to stand up against torture and evildoing - or for justice and equality - in the grand gestures most of us dream of. On the other hand, the opportunity to stand up against a small injustice, or for a small truth or a small good, comes nearly every day.

Old Deuteronomy's lived a long time; He's a Cat who has lived many lives in succession. He was famous in proverb and famous in rhyme A long while before Queen Victoria's accession. Old Deuteronomy's buried nine wives And more – I am tempted to say, ninety-nine; And his numerous progeny prospers and thrives And the village is proud of him in his decline. At the sight of that placid and bland physiognomy, When he sits in the sun on the vicarage wall, The Oldest Inhabitant croaks: "Well, of all … Things … Can it be … really! … No! … Yes! … Ho! hi! Oh, my eye! My mind may be wandering, but I confess I believe it is Old Deuteronomy!" Old Deuteronomy sits in the street, He sits in the High Street on market day; The bullocks may bellow, the sheep they may bleat, But the dogs and the herdsman will turn them away. The cars and the lorries run over the kerb, And the villagers put up a notice: ROAD CLOSED — So that nothing untoward may chance to disturb Deuteronomy's rest when he feels so disposed Or when he's engaged in domestic economy: And the Oldest Inhabitant croaks: "Well of all … Things … Can it be … really! … No! … Yes! … Ho! hi! Oh, my eye! My sight's unreliable, but I can guess That the cause of the trouble is Old Deuteronomy!

History favors the underfoot and the oppressed, Your Majest," he says. "The years are long, but eventually, always, fortunes shift. The people rise. Such is the way of things. Either let change come willingly, help it along, or face the wrath of such force. It might not be you, or even your children. But the day will come when Reds storm the gates of your castles, break your crowns, and slit the throats of your descendants as they beg for the mercy you will not show now.

I want to choose you,” Noam said softly. “Every day, again and again.” Dara kissed him, Noam’s lips parting under the pressure of Dara’s mouth and his hand lifting to Dara’s cheek. And for that moment Noam let himself believe in the future they’d spun together, all its brightness and its flaws, something so magnificently mundane it almost felt unachievable: late mornings waking up together, Dara perched on the kitchen counter while Noam made dinner, trading work stories over tea in the early evening, Wolf curled up in bed between them while they slept.

The key to a happy marriage is this: Every day when you wake up, commit yourself to making him feel like Superman. Light up when he enters the room. Let him know as often as you can how much you appreciate him and everything he does for you. If he wants to get it on, honey, get it on. And when he’s tired, or ill, or grouchy, take care of him in any way you can.” When I’d offered her a (very) skeptical frown, she’d added, “That doesn’t mean turning yourself into June Cleaver, Abby.

The sand was smooth. The damp morning fog had hardened its top layer and the heat of the day had set it so that with every footstep the surface cracked, the crunch almost audible. The heels and balls of their shoes made a path of shallow divots, but it was far easier to walk on than the usual loose and gritty beach. In minutes, the wind worked to sweep their footprints clean and offer a flat, clear expanse all the way to the ocean where the sand became wet and sparkled invitingly with seawater.

Once, I was afraid of these walls, frightened by such beauty. But I see the cracks now. It's like the day of the bombing, when I realized Silvers were not invincible. Then it was an explosion—now a few bullets have shattered diamondglass, revealing fear and paranoia beneath. Silvers fleeing from Reds—lions running from mice. The king and queen oppose each other, the court has their own alliances, and Cal—the perfect prince, the good soldier—is a torturous, terrible enemy. Anyone can betray anyone.

Most people are born the day they arrive in this world. They take their first breath, open their eyes, take in their surroundings and then they scream. It’s the same for most. The moment they are held in their parent’s arms is the moment they truly begin to live. Not me. I was born on the 4th February, 1999 in so many different ways. In the morning, I went from being a girl to a woman. I lost my innocence in a way not many others have lost theirs before. Then I went home and lost my youth. My parents have turned their backs on me and I have happily walked away, and even though that walk was painful, it was also freeing. My wings have spread and finally, I feel like I am soaring.

I can’t fathom the day when I’ll be able to figure out how to independently maneuver my way into my bra, like I used to, every day since I was thirteen. The left arm through the left loop, the left boob into the left cup. Never mind the clasp in the back. My poor injured brain gets all twisted up like some circus contortionist even trying to imagine how this procedure would work. I’m supposed to at least try every step of getting dressed on my own, but when it comes to the bra, I no longer bother. My mother just does it for me, and we don’t tell the therapists.She holds up one of my white Victoria’s Secret Miracle Bras. I close my eyes, shutting out the humiliating image of my mother manhandling my boobs. But even with my eyes closed, I can feel her cold fingers against my bare skin, and as I can’t help but picture what she’s doing, humiliation saunters right in, takes a seat, and puts its feet up. Like it does every day now.

As I was editing this chapter, a survey of more than thirty-five hundred Australian surgeons revealed a culture rife with bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment, against women especially (although men weren’t untouched either). To give you a flavor of professional life as a woman in this field, female trainees and junior surgeons “reported feeling obliged to give their supervisors sexual favours to keep their jobs”; endured flagrantly illegal hostility toward the notion of combining career with motherhood; contended with “boys’ clubs”; and experienced entrenched sexism at all levels and “a culture of fear and reprisal, with known bullies in senior positions seen as untouchable.”68 I came back to this chapter on the very day that news broke in the state of Victoria, Australia, where I live, of a Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission report revealing that sexual discrimination and harassment is also shockingly prevalent in the Victorian Police, which unlawfully failed to provide an equal and safe working environment.69 I understand that attempts to identify the psychological factors that underlie sex inequalities in the workplace are well-meaning. And, of course, we shouldn’t shy away from naming (supposedly) politically unpalatable causes of those inequalities. But when you consider the women who enter and persist in highly competitive and risky occupations like surgery and policing—despite the odds stacked against them by largely unfettered sex discrimination and harassment—casual scholarly suggestions that women are relatively few in number, particularly in the higher echelons, because they’re less geared to compete in the workplace, start to seem almost offensive. Testosterone

I immersed myself in my relationship with my husband, in little ways at first. Dutch would come home from his morning workout and I’d bring him coffee as he stepped out of the shower. He’d slip into a crisp white shirt and dark slacks and run a little goop through his hair, and I’d eye him in the mirror with desire and a sultry smile that he couldn’t miss. He’d head to work and I’d put a love note in his bag—just a line about how proud I was of him. How beautiful he was. How happy I was as his wife. He’d come home and cook dinner and instead of camping out in front of the TV while he fussed in the kitchen, I’d keep him company at the kitchen table and we’d talk about our days, about our future, about whatever came to mind. After dinner, he’d clear the table and I’d do the dishes, making sure to compliment him on the meal. On those weekends when he’d head outside to mow the lawn, I’d bring him an ice-cold beer. And, in those times when Dutch was in the mood and maybe I wasn’t, well, I got in the mood and we had fun. As the weeks passed and I kept discovering little ways to open myself up to him, the most amazing thing happened. I found myself falling madly, deeply, passionately, head-over-heels in love with my husband. I’d loved him as much as I thought I could love anybody before I’d married him, but in treating him like my own personal Superman, I discovered how much of a superhero he actually was. How giving he was. How generous. How kind, caring, and considerate. How passionate. How loving. How genuinely good. And whatever wounds had never fully healed from my childhood finally, at long last, formed scar tissue. It was like being able to take a full breath of air for the first time in my life. It was transformative. And it likely would save our marriage, because, at some point, all that withholding would’ve turned a loving man bitter. On some level I think I’d known that and yet I’d needed my sister to point it out to me and help me change. Sometimes it’s good to have people in your life that know you better than you know yourself.