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10fcf0a
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We lose ourselves," she repeated, forming each word with care, "but we find our way back." Wasn't that the story of her life? Wasn't that the story of Bethie's? You make the wrong choices, you make mistakes, you disappear for a decade, you marry the wrong man. You get hurt. You lose sight of who you are, or of who you want to be, and then you remember, and if you're lucky you have sisters or friends who remind you when you forget your best ..
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Jennifer Weiner |
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e1aee2b
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Maybe love was a myth anyhow, a brew of hormones and fantasy, evolution's way of getting men and women together long enough for them to procreate,back in the day when girls got pregnant at twelve, were pregnant or nursing for the next twenty years, and were dead of the plague by forty.
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myth
sex
love
procreation
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Jennifer Weiner |
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09c428f
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Your first love is important. It's part of your story. The story you'll tell yourself, the one you'll tell about yourself, for the rest of your life.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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6d140df
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The way I see it," she began, "your mother's devoted her whole life to you kids." She said "you kids" in precisely the same tone I would have used for "you infestation of cockroaches"
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Jennifer Weiner |
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fb77ec7
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I don't like futons. They can't commit. I'm a bed! I'm a couch! I'm a bed! I'm a couch!
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Jennifer Weiner |
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6985bf7
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Hell is an Eagles game where the bleachers are always freezing, the team is always loosing, and my family is insane
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Jennifer Weiner |
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7561ac2
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You don't get perfect-but I was going to grab this happiness and hold it as tightly as I could. I was going to enjoy it for as long as it lasted.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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22c5f8c
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One of its ears stuck straight up, the other flopped as it ran, and I remembered something I'd read somewhere--that when God sees a dog he likes, He folds one of its ears down to remember it.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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aca5d7a
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There are two kinds of houses in the neighborhood where I grew up-the ones where the parents stayed married, and the ones where they didn't.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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da96f8d
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The measure of a man is, does he know how to love.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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c981307
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So I could write a story about a girl who was a lot like me, her ex-boyfriend, who was a lot like Satan, witha twitchy eyelid and a penis the size of a worn-down nub of an eraser.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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46d3332
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She hated the implied familiarity when customers requested things from her by name...
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Jennifer Weiner |
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fe68ada
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I had started on the marriage and motherhood beat by accident with a post on my personal, read only by friends, blog called 'Fifty Shades of Men'. I had written it after buying Fifty Shades of Grey to spice up what Dave and I half-jokingly called our grown up time, and had written a meditation on how the sex wasn't the sexiest part of the book. "Dear publishers, I will tell you why every woman with a ring on her finger and a car seat in her..
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fifty-shades-of-grey
no-worries
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Jennifer Weiner |
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cb56dc4
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I know that what had happened with my father - his insults, his criticism, the way he made me feel that I was defective and deformed - had hurt me. I'd encountered enough of those self-help articles in women's magazines to know that you don't go through that kind of cruelty unscathed. With every man I met, I'd watch myself carefully. Did I really like that editor, I'd wonder, or am I just searching for Daddy? Do I love this guy, I'd ask mys..
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Jennifer Weiner |
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817f918
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Baby," groaned the guy-Ted? Tad?-something like that-and crushed his lips against the side of her neck, shoving her face against the wall of the toilet stall."
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Jennifer Weiner |
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d5c3a93
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You've got to make time. It's important. You know how they tell you on planes, in case of an emergency, the adults should put their oxygen masks on first? You're not going to be any good to anyone if you're not taking care of yourself.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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4c7f78c
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He'd been lonely, and I'd been lonely, but if we were together, we'd never have to be lonely again.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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9b09ef9
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Husbands and houses are negotiable," she said, "And as for a plan... we'll figure it out."
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Jennifer Weiner |
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80082cc
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Rose leaned against the bathroom door. Here it was -- her real life, the truth of who she was, barreling down on her like a bus with bad brakes. Here was the truth -- she wasn't the kind of person Jim could fall in love with. She wasn't what she'd made herself out to be -- a cheerful, uncomplicated girl, a normal girl with a happy, orderly life, a girl who wore pretty shoes and had nothing more pressing on her mind that whether ER was a rer..
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family-relationships
sibling-relationships
siblings
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Jennifer Weiner |
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ae06c2d
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Women had made progress - Jo only had to look as far as the television set to see it - but she wondered whether they would ever not try to have it all and do it all and do it all flawlessly. Would the day ever come when simply doing your best would be enough?
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Jennifer Weiner |
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6f9ea60
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You'll get through it," she said, leaving out the part I already knew-because you're a mother now. Because mothers don't have a choice."
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Jennifer Weiner |
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8039dcf
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She took no pleasure from the very things I loved, from her size, her amplitude, her luscious, zaftig heft. As many times as I told her she was beautiful, I know that she never believed me. As many times as I said it didn't matter, I knew that to her it did. I was just one voice, and the world's voice was louder. I could feel her shame like a palpable thing, walking beside us on the street, crouched down between us in a movie theater, coile..
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Jennifer Weiner |
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742d4c7
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Born on third base and think they hit a triple,
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Jennifer Weiner |
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433b5cf
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If she married a man, she could let him plan, let him push, let him maneuver; and the world they inhabited would welcome them. They would always have a place. It would be easy, and Jo was so tired.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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917777a
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People are like that. They can only give you what they have inside. So if this Sydelle character is giving you so much trouble, it's because she's nothing but trouble on the inside. She's just delivering what's in her heart into the universe.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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b426e1a
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I always wondered, though, what the fathers felt as they drove up the street they used to drive down every night, and whether they really saw their former houses, whether they noticed how things got frayed and flaky around the edges now that they were gone. I wondered it again as I pulled up to the house I'd grown up in. It was, I noticed, looking even more Joad-like than usual. Neither my mother nor the dread life partner, Tanya, was much ..
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Jennifer Weiner |
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ee1c7e6
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There is a long time in me between knowing and telling." --GRACE PALEY"
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Jennifer Weiner |
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74f205f
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Admitting you had a problem was the first step - everyone knew that - but admitting you had a problem also left you open to the possibility that maybe you couldn't fix it
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Jennifer Weiner |
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c21f5b7
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Still waters run deep, I'd thought. Later, I learned that silence did not necessarily guarantee depth.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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52549a2
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A body was just a body, just a vessel for her soul, and she was under no obligation to keep her body looking any certain way, no more than she was obliged to do anything just because it was customary, or traditional, or expected of women in America. She didn't have to get married, she didn't have to have kids, and she didn't have to be thin.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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014c9ad
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Something that's bigger than you, and something that's kind and forgiving, I'd heard one of the meeting leaders say. That's all your Higher Power has to be.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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fab203c
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A girl named Jo once had a life / But that's gone now; she's only wife.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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802745a
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This thing that I created, this thing I made as a woman, for other women, is worth something. It's worth exactly the same as what a similar thing, built by a man, for men, is worth.
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writing
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Jennifer Weiner |
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0c536b5
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She and her friends would talk about their husbands like they were children, or pets - some strange species responsible for bad smells and strange noises and messes they'd have to clean up.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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4f312fc
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I didn't trust people who forgot to eat.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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addb56d
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If you want to hit someone or you want to throw something, I want you to run first. I want you to run until you can hardly lift your legs and your arms. Run until you're exhausted, and then, if you still want to hit someone or throw something, you just wait 'til you've caught your breath again and then go for it. Try it,
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Jennifer Weiner |
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d6765e0
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With motherhood and marriage there was no finish line, no hour or day or year when you got to say you were through. Life just went on and on, endless and formless, with no performance evaluation, no raises or feedback or two weeks' vacation.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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ca82cdb
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You're allowed to want to use your education. You're allowed to want to be more than a mother.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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86ce2b8
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I should have been moved. I wasn't. It was as if I'd been frozen, as if I was now a woman made of ice, and he'd come at me not with a torch or even a candle, but with a toothpick, and was plink plink plinking against the smooth impenetrability of my body. I couldn't feel a thing.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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36fe022
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He had sacrificed so much -- And now? What if not even all that was enough to quiet that voice....the voice that said, 'You're not worthy, you don't deserve it, nothing you do will ever be enough.
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Jennifer Weiner |
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5fabe67
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I miss him all the time." I shook my head, disgusted at my own mopiness. "It's like being haunted or something. And I don't have the luxury of being haunted right now. I need to think about myself..."
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Jennifer Weiner |
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8fcf607
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How do you find happiness in a body like yours...like mine? How do you find courage to follow anything anywhere if you don't feel like you fit in the world?
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Jennifer Weiner |
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b68c9c0
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Did any love ever feel as sweet as first love? Were we all just damaged goods now, battered cans in the grocery store sale bin, day old bread, marked down at the registered, hoping that someone would look past the obvious flaws and love us enough to take us home?
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Jennifer Weiner |
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679e0d2
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Jo thought sometimes that Bethie liked to play at being a rebel, when the truth was that her sister had a genius for conformity, for making herself the best, most stylish example of whatever version of femininity was currently in fashion.
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Jennifer Weiner |