I press my eyes shut and will the thoughts away. But they refuse to comply, and instead, they lodge themselves in the crevasses of my brain, poking out just enough that I know they're still with me, like a tiny splinter in your baby toe that gnaws away at you with every step you take.

Allison Winn Scotch

Categorized in : Baby Brain Eye

There is a moment in every relationship when one of the parties senses its imminent demise. There's a moment of incredible clarity when your stomach drops with a heavy sense of dread, and you feel like control is slipping through your fingertips even as you try to hold on.

Allison Winn Scotch

slipping party trying

That you can look back fondly or even wistfully on pieces of your life and hound yourself with endless what-ifs, but nothing will change. The present will still be the present. The future will still unfold as it's meant to.

Allison Winn Scotch

hounds pieces looks

There's always more than one path, and to think otherwise is what... by Allison Winn Scotch

There's always more than one path, and to think otherwise is what resigns you to fate.

Allison Winn Scotch

fate path thinking

We all have those moments where we realize how easily our lives could be so different, for better or for worse. I met my husband at a gym in NYC! What if I'd joined a different gym? What if I hadn't worked out in the afternoons? These questions are endless.

Allison Winn Scotch

nyc what-if husband

There is the before. And then there is the after. Happiness is what you choose, what you follow, not what follows you. These are the things I have seen, these are the things I now know, these are the things I will carry with me as I go.

Allison Winn Scotch

you-choose knows

No one really can have any idea if it's luck or happenstance or timing or fate or the universe or just smart choices that grant you a good life, a happy one. All we can do is decide to own our choices no matter what, to honor them and ourselves as best we can. That whatever is within our control (and there is plenty that is not) is ours. Mine. Responsibility. Conviction.

Allison Winn Scotch

good-life smart responsibility

But what's regret anyway? Regret, I am learning these days, is a lot of things. But mostly, it's a slippery seed of longing, of looking back and asking yourself why you didn't know better when the answers were so obvious all along.

Allison Winn Scotch

asking-yourself-why regret answers

I like to take inspiration from people who do things that I could... by Allison Winn Scotch

I like to take inspiration from people who do things that I could never do.

Allison Winn Scotch

inspiration people

If we always take the path of least resistance, if we embrace inertia, if we never leap, if we never accept accountability for our choices, how can we find any triumph in our victories or any remorse in our losses?

Allison Winn Scotch

accountability choices loss

I might have felt broken, but at the end of it all, I didn't allo... by Allison Winn Scotch

I might have felt broken, but at the end of it all, I didn't allow myself to break.

Allison Winn Scotch

break broken might

You have to know... What you have to know in all of this, through all of this, is that no matter how lost you are in this maze of hell and confusion, that in the end, I promise you, you will be found.

Allison Winn Scotch

confusion matter promise

There's no time to hold grudges when you've seen how fragile thin... by Allison Winn Scotch

There's no time to hold grudges when you've seen how fragile things can really be.

Allison Winn Scotch

fragile grudge fragile-things

Eventually kids become grown-ups too, and from there, the world is whatever they choose to make of it.

Allison Winn Scotch

kids world