4 Quotes by Ruth Wariner

I wanted nothing more out of life than I did to keep my family together and make sure they were safe. The memory of those days reminds me of how exhausted I had been, but my siblings gave my life purpose, they were my bridge from pain to healing, from past to future. They are as much the authors of my survival as I am of theirs.

Mom couldn’t teach me that because she didn’t know herself. She couldn’t show me how to be happy, only how to barely survive.

All the preaching, all the hours in church memorizing scriptures, how could that mean anything when the community supporting it wouldn’t defend the innocence and safety of a child?

As I pulled the covers up and let Micah settle in next to me, I heard Mom’s voice in my ears: Children need to get used to being in the dark. She’d repeated that countless times throughout my childhood. No, I thought, they don’t.