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The Heart Principle
by Helen Hoang

“Tough love is brutally honest and hurts you to help you. Tough love cuts you when you’re already bruised and berates you when you don’t heal faster.” (p. 31)

“By changing myself, I learned a sense of belonging.

But maybe I belonged all along. Just with a different group of people.” (p. 92)

“I cry for the girl I used to be.

I cry for me.

It’s a foreign experience. Self-pity is not an indulgence that I allow myself. This doesn’t feel like pity, though. It feels like self-compassion, and the realization makes me cry harder. 

No one should need a diagnosis in order to be compassionate to themself.” (p. 92)

“He let me choose. And because of that, I could choose to give. That completely changes things.” (p. 295)

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