[ m u l l m e o v e r ]

Dutiful daughter, all my plans were laid Tendrils tucked into a woven braid Growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all —Taylor Swift

"It distressed Raegan how everything could change with no material reflection to mark the passage—not when she looked in the mirror and not when she moved about the world. It had been the same when her father disappeared. She remembered wondering how the sun could still rise in the same place when nothing was as it had ever been before." —Victoria Mier

"She was little like her mother, though that was all she had ever longed to be. She lacked the gift of people-speaking, that power to convince and control that laced every word her mother uttered. She did not possess that grace and beauty that all in a room turned to watch. But had the queen ever told a nursery story to a room of captivated listeners? Or handled fifty head of geese? Ani smiled at the thought, and then she surprised herself by feeling proud. I've done that much. What more can I do?" —Shannon Hale

"I found the tears pouring down my cheeks, all the tears I had not shed before, a flood of weeping that racked my whole body, and I stood with my head against the trunk of a willow and beat my fists against its bark until my hands bled. If I could have screamed my anguish I would have done, until the whole valley echoed with my pain. I stood there a long time. At last I sank to the ground by the great willow and covered my face with my hands. My shoulders were shaking, and my nose was running, and the tears would not stop. If I sat there long enough, perhaps I would become part of this tree, a weeping tree-girl that cried each night by the water. Perhaps I would vanish into the soft earth of the river bank, and in my place reeds would grow, slender and silver-grey, and if a man fashioned a pipe from these reeds, it would sing 'too late, too late'." —Juliet Marillier

"'Your trauma made you stronger.' No, my trauma made me traumatised. It made me weak, gave me sleepless nights, and memory loss. It gave me feelings I've never wanted. I made myself stronger, by dragging myself out of a dark place, and dealing with consequences that weren't my fault." —Unknown

"Try to come at a trauma survivor with platitudes or toxic positivity, and they'll tell you where exactly you can store those platitudes and toxic positivity for safekeeping. They didn't survive hell to have you regurgitate inspirational Tumblr posts at them." —Glenn Doyle

"To be passive is to let others decide for you. To be aggressive is to decide for others. To be assertive is to decide for yourself." —Edith Eger

"I risked more if I didn't ask for what we needed to save Marianne's life. Today, asserting myself could lead to retaliation, imprisonment, torture. And yet, not to try, that is a risk too." —Edith Eger