When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always.

Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.

Helplessness and anger make for predictable behavior: Children are certain to shove each other and pull hair, teenagers will call each other names and cry, and grown women who are sisters will say words so cruel that each syllable will take on the form of a snake, although such a snake often circles in on itself to eat its own tail once the words are said aloud.

When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always.

Still, she knows one thing for certain: never judge a relationship unless you are the one wrapped up in its arms.

Judging Natalie as my mother had judged me was, I felt like telling her son, just my ass-backward way of showing love. I'd spent my life trying to translate that language, and now I realized I had come to speak it fluently. When was it that you realized the thread woven through your DNA carried the relationship deformities of your blood relatives as much as it did their diabetes and bone density?