“Because even though you don't want anyone to own you, it doesn't mean that there is nowhere you belong.”
This compassionate woman works with troubled children everyday. She understands their aversion to authority because she's been allowed to observe so many cases firsthand. As a healthy, functioning adult, however, she also knows that it can't be allowed to continue unrestrained. She tells this child that they still can find parents without feeling compromised. Autonomy is not the true price of family.
"God only knew how she wanted to believe it. Every single day, she practiced her detachment skills, trying not to care about everything that was wrong with the world. Or rather...to care, but in a suitably civilized manner, with an admirable commitment that might still be set aside when she came home to Morten and her family, complete with well-reasoned and coherent opinions of the humanist persuasion. Right now she felt more like one of those manic women from the animal protection societies, with wild hair and ever wilder eyes. Desperate.”
Because of her emotionally demanding job, Nina struggles to maintain work-life balance. She knows that it is psychologically imperative that she treat her cases with a certain amount of detachment so that they don't consume her. After all, she has to take care of her own family too and cannot do so if her mind is bogged down with too much emotional trauma. In her unique position, she must reason through the terrible things she witnesses. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Nina struggles to do this well.
“Nina couldn’t help wondering if the lives of other people were really as simple as they looked. As simple, and as happy.”
Nina meets extraordinary people through her job, people who have survived seemingly impossible situations. When she looks around at her "normal" life, she can tell that the people she cares about aren't as perfect as they seem. If this kind of brutality exists in the world, then it must exist in the lives of everyone somehow. This unique perspective enables Nina to offer help to the people with whom she interacts without embarrassing them. She's real with people.
“She did not want to admit to just how alone she was. It was shameful, like some embarrassing disease.”
When Sigita is drugged and loses her son, she has a difficult time persuading the police that her story is true. She doesn't have anyone else to turn to for help, though. This fact alone is mortifying to her because she believes it's her fault that she's alone. Doing her best, she's managed to raise her son with love, but she hasn't had time for other people. Now, sitting in a police station, she can't bring herself to confess how alone she is. Perhaps in doing so, she would condemn herself because the authorities would decide she was an unfit parent all along.
