“I pictured the mother whale, exhausted from labor, pushing her calf up to the skin of the water. The miracle of breath in the face of predation, life in the wake of whaling ships.” — Megan Mayhew Bergman Copy Share Image
“Sometimes it helps to lie. You tell yourself a story, even if you don't know the ending.” — Megan Mayhew Bergman Copy Share Image
“Mothers, I believe, intoxicate us. We idolize them and take them for granted. We hate them and blame them and exalt them more thoroughly… — Megan Mayhew Bergman Copy Share Image
“Sometimes you didn't know what you were after, I thought. Maybe there was a speck on the horizon and you followed it, hoping for… — Megan Mayhew Bergman Copy Share Image
“I remember thinking that moms were not allowed to be sad, that surely women grew out of sadness by the time they had children.” — Megan Mayhew Bergman Copy Share Image
“I want to mother the world, I thought. I have so much love. Then—I have no business being a mother. I am a selfish… — Megan Mayhew Bergman Copy Share Image
“I wanted, then, to become what I most admired, what now seemed most real to me. I wanted to be that exalted, complicated presence… — Megan Mayhew Bergman Copy Share Image
“It was a character-building week, a week that thinned my hair, put circles underneath my eyes.” — Megan Mayhew Bergman Copy Share Image
There were no promises, no obligations between living things, she thought. Not even humans. Just raw need hidden by a game of make-believe — Megan Mayhew Bergman Copy Share Image
“I pictured the mother whale, exhausted from labor, pushing her calf up to the skin of the water. The miracle of breath in the… — Megan Mayhew Bergman Copy Share Image
“I don't want him to know that people like Louis's mom exist, that people fall into land mines of pain and can't crawl back… — Megan Mayhew Bergman Copy Share Image
