You don’t have to win trophies to be worth something.

If you want to just be a normal kid, then be a normal kid.

Don’t let anyone — not me, not your mother — turn you into an ornament.” His eyes filled, and he dropped the console, and then he threw his arms around my neck and buried his face in my shoulder and sobbed — not the manipulative cry of a spoiled child but the wail of a prisoner hearing the lock on his cell finally click open.

I held the boy I had helped to break, and prayed it was not too late for him to heal.