Aspen Matis

"Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing - able - to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed [my mom] to help me, to take care of things for me - and to save me - but, back in the home where I'd learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it."

"I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic."

"It was my first lesson in the fragility of attraction."

"My malady was submission.The symptom: my compliance.The antidote was loud clear boundaries."

"Childhood is a wilderness."