“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”

“I mean, if you were to find a shattered mirror, find all the pieces, all the shards and all the tiny chips, and have whatever skill and patience it took to put all that broken glass back together so that it was complete once again, the restored mirror would still be spiderwebbed with cracks, it would still be a useless glued version of its former self, which could show only fragmented reflections of anyone looking into it. Some things are beyond repair. And that was me.”

“Perception is ones own reality so it's best not build your perception out of glass or be prepared to be shattered beyond repair”

“All parents damage their children. This was their life together. Neglect. Violence. Silence.”

“In some sense every parent does love their children. But some parents are too broken to love them well& others are barely able to love them at all..”

“If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture.”