Melanie Shankle Quotes

...motherhood is the thing in a woman's life that catches her by total and complete surprise.

Of course there was no way my mind could have comprehended all that this friendship would become. There are probably only a handful of times in our lives when someone who will change us forever walks in-- when we find someone we can love with our whole hearts, who will challenge us and shape us and make us feel like the world is safer and brighter just because they are in it. A person who loves us for exactly who we are, yet teaches us to be better because of who they are and how they live their life.

Some roads we travel in life can feel like the ones that might break us, but that's why God surrounds us with people who will cheer us on and wipe our tears and listen as we pour out our hearts. Because often, it's not what you say but what you do that really matters.

We both learned how to be a friend by watching the women who came before us. Women who taught us that it's okay to show someone who you really are-that when you stop hiding behind a mask of perfection and protection, you unlock something beautiful.... Our girlfriends weave a luminous thread from the women we are to the women we hope to become, We may never find perfection, but we'll never be alone.

When Perry and I walked into the hospital waiting room and I saw her sitting there, I began to cry, because that's what friendship looks like: knowing your friend better than she knows herself and being there to hold her hand while her heart breaks.

You hear so many people talk about finding their soul mates only in relation to who they marry, but I think that, as women, our real soul mates are often found when we recognize some version of ourselves in someone else.