Vanessa Diffenbaugh Quotes
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I've worked with homeless kids, kids in foster care, and I've never met a kid who couldn't be reached.
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Writing has always been an interest of mine, and 'The Language of Flowers' combined my experience with foster care with something I've always wanted to do.
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I've always loved the language of flowers. I discovered Kate Greenaway's 'Language of Flowers' in a used bookstore when I was 16 and couldn't believe it was such a well-kept secret. How could something so beautiful and romantic be virtually unknown?
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I traveled a full two years with 'Language of Flowers.'
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We are more and more into technology. Everything is texting, and everything is instant. Flowers are completely impractical as a method of communication when you could just send a text.
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First drafts are never any good - at least, mine aren't.
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I never really considered writing something that was nonfiction.
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My husband and I vowed that after we married and settled down, we would become foster parents - a vow we kept and one that has enriched our lives greatly.
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I don't think there is anything magical about the language of flowers in real life or in my book.
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I'm missing work. We didn't have enough money for preschool. I had a panic attack. I couldn't do it. I became one of those horrible foster parents who give the kids back.
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I wanted to write with emotional honesty and tell a story people could connect with. And I wanted people to know how the foster system in America fails children; and how, at 18, they fall through the cracks. Then we can all work together and give support.
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My last book, 'The Language of Flowers,' I wrote completely on naptime, when my little kids were asleep.
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I have spent a lot of time with foster children over the years - kids for whom I have not necessarily acted as a foster parent.
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Our standards for motherhood are so high that many of us harbor intense, secret guilt for every harsh word we speak to our children, every negative thought that enters our minds.
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I think that the hardest thing about working with young people in foster care who've been through this kind of neglect and abuse is really to convince them that they are worthy of being loved. And I think because often they don't feel worthy of it, that's why they push people away.
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My husband was working as principal of an urban transformation high school - the kind of public charter school determined to do whatever it takes to give its mostly minority, low-income student body the education they need and deserve to be successful in life.
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If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously, as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.
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I am not only the person who wrote and sold a novel while raising a houseful of biological and foster children; I am also the person who wrote a horrific young adult novel that never sold and gave up on a foster child I couldn't handle - an experience that still haunts me.