Kim Quindlen

You’re going to have many moments where you’ll just want to fix everything for us. You’ll desperately search for a way to make it all better and to keep us from pain. Accept right now that you do not have that power. What you can do is be patient, loving, encouraging, light, optimistic, and reassuring. That’s more important to us and more powerful than you even realize.

Set timers on your phone during which you minimize all distractions (social media, email, etc) and aim to get as much done as possible in ten, twenty, or thirty minute increments.

People are going to continue to ask you about your love life and they’re not going to stop. There’s not really a “getting over it” so much as a “getting used to it.” Most of the time, they mean no harm.

Making your younger sibling drive you around when you’re home for the holidays, because cars are scary and you forgot how to be a person.

They’re the first person you go to for life advice: Should I quit my job? Can I use this Advil if it expired two years ago? How much longer do I have to wait before I can eat at Chipotle again?

Integrity and character will always be more important than power and wealth.

You will have moments, sometimes within seconds of each other, in which you feel proud of yourself and disgusted with yourself at the same time.

Valentine’s Day can be stressful – even if (and many times because) you are in a relationship. How do you find the perfect gift? What’s the best way to say I love you? And, most importantly: is it still possible to be romantic without being in the middle of a sappy, Notebook-style relationship? The answer is yes.

“I had been complaining a lot about being tired lately so one morning after he slept over I woke up (after he had left really early) and there was a new bottle of Vitamin B12 on my nightstand with a note. It wasn’t the sweetest thing he ever did but it was such a small, considerate thing to do that it makes me smile every time I think about it.”

Pick out your outfit the night before. The less you have to think about when you wake up, the better. Plus, heading out the door feeling confident about what you’re wearing is a great feeling.

You know that it’s “just what happens.” You know that it’s the “circle of life.” But those kinds of phrases and truths are so much harder to digest when they are suddenly realized in your own life.

“Congratulations to the GOP on having your biggest embarrassment endorse your second biggest embarrassment.”

You can’t force someone to love you, to treat you a certain way. To be honest, faithful, supportive, and kind. But you can love yourself enough to acknowledge when you’re being treated wrongly and when you deserve better.

We are programmed to strive for improvement, prosperity, success, growth. Challenge, possibility, knowledge, enlightenment. And it’s not even the end goal that actually, truly satisfies us. It’s the experience that our minds and bodies go through in the process that brings us such joy and satisfaction.

Find a positive mantra to repeat in your head every day, even if it’s as simple as “I can do this” or “I’m going to be alright.”

The belief that you are special.

You wore flip flops until mid-November, which consistently confused your southern-born friends. In their world, fifty-five degrees was freezing.

Nothing is as infectious as watching joyful people do what they love.