{"author":"Aspen Matis","author_id":"Aspen+Matis","total_quotes":122,"quotes":[{"text":"For this entire walk, my desire had ashamed me, as if my wanting to be kissed that night mitigated the fault of Junior's sudden deafness. I'd been given stacks of reasons to blame myself for an act of violence committed by another. I had blamed my flirting for his subsequent felony. My college taught me: my rape was my shame. Everyone I'd trusted asked only what I might have done to let it happen. In my gut, I'd always believed I'd caused it.I finally questioned it.","author":"Aspen Matis","tags":["aspen-matis","girl-in-the-woods","love","memoir","self-realization","truth","woods"],"id":1916,"author_id":"Aspen+Matis"},{"text":"Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing - able - to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed [my mom] to help me, to take care of things for me - and to save me - but, back in the home where I'd learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it.","author":"Aspen Matis","tags":["helplessness","independence","trapped"],"id":2548,"author_id":"Aspen+Matis"},{"text":"My mother overstated the dangers of the world – invented threats. And so I saw: Starbursts’ hoof-made gelatin never gave me mad cow. Mad cow was not a threat to me. And so I thought: most risks weren’t truly real.","author":"Aspen Matis","tags":["aspen-matis","memoir","mothers-and-daughters","pct","young-woman"],"id":5127,"author_id":"Aspen+Matis"},{"text":"It finally had to.I understood that it wouldn’t be easy, it would be very hard; I’d need to resist the habit I had developed long ago – with conviction. I’d have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threats like a Taser gun. I’d stun them. They’d bow to me. I’d let my no echo against the mountains.","author":"Aspen Matis","tags":["aspen-matis","hiking-the-pct","memoir","self-confidence"],"id":7210,"author_id":"Aspen+Matis"},{"text":"I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic.","author":"Aspen Matis","tags":["aspen-matis","memoir"],"id":8600,"author_id":"Aspen+Matis"},{"text":"Childhood is a wilderness.","author":"Aspen Matis","tags":["aspen-matis","hiking","memoir","pct","wisdom"],"id":18035,"author_id":"Aspen+Matis"},{"text":"It took me almost two thousand miles in the woods to see I had to do some hard work that wasn’t simply walking—that I needed to begin respecting my own body’s boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me. Moving forward, I wanted rules.First—when I felt unsafe I’d leave, immediately. The first time, not the tenth time. Not after a hundred red flags smacked in wind violently, clear as trail signs pointing the way to SNAKES. Not after I’d been bitten—the violation. If I wasn’t interested, I would reject the man blatantly.","author":"Aspen Matis","tags":["aspen-matis","hiking-the-pct","memoir"],"id":18279,"author_id":"Aspen+Matis"},{"text":"My malady was submission.The symptom: my compliance.The antidote was loud clear boundaries.","author":"Aspen Matis","tags":["aspen-matis","memoir","quotes"],"id":21166,"author_id":"Aspen+Matis"},{"text":"It was my first lesson in the fragility of attraction.","author":"Aspen Matis","tags":["aspen-matis","hiking-the-pct","memoir"],"id":25358,"author_id":"Aspen+Matis"},{"text":"I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough.","author":"Aspen Matis","tags":["aspen-matis","empowerment","girl-in-the-woods","hiking"],"id":35091,"author_id":"Aspen+Matis"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":122,"pages":13,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}