Jo: Was your mother raped? Was your mother raped by your father? Is that why you exist? Do you look like a rapist? Do you wear his face? Okay, then. I don’t think you do get this, so please go home.
Jo: I remember playing in this crappy playground when I was 7. (…) and there was this girl (…) and she went sliding down this yellow slide, and she just crashed right into the concrete. And I remember her mom just run over and scooped her up and held her, (…) she just… she just whispered, “I’m sorry” in her daughter’s ear, and she just kept holding her and holding her. Until she felt like it was safe to let go.
My whole life, I was convinced that, if I ever met my mom, she would do the same, that she would say she was sorry, and she would hold me until I felt safe. But that’s not ever gonna happen because I never should have existed in the first place.
Paul? Everything he did to me? Everything I escaped? That was my birthright, Meredith. That was my enheritance.
Meredith: Jo, if you didn’t exist, Megan Hunt’s abdominal wall transplant would have never happened. Mini-livers would’ve taken years, not months. Paul would still be hurting his fiancĂ©, I’m sure. Alex Karev would probably still be “evil-spawn.” Alex Karev would not be the man he is without loving you or being loved by you.
Violence isn’t your birthright or your inheritance. It’s something you survived because you are the opposite of that. You have en enormous will, an enormous heart, an enormous capacity for survival.
You’ve taken all this darkness and used it to help other people who are walking through the same. You lined that hallway with women to help that woman who was hurting badly just hurt a little bit less.
You’ve taken your darkest experiences that life gave you, and you turned it around and turned it into light. And if the woman who gave birth to you doesn’t want to see that, then that’s on her.
Meredith: You know, there was a moment years ago, I … slipped, and fell into the sound. into freezing, freezing cold water. and I thought to myself, just for one moment, I thought, “Why fight? Why not just stop?”
Jo: But you fought?
Meredith: No, I didn’t. I stopped. The only reason I’m here is because the people who loved me didn’t give up on me, so what’s i’m asking you is, is this you telling me that you just need few more days under the covers until you can go back to work? Or you telling me that you want to stop?
Jo: I don’t wanna stop and I do.
(Jo confessing her sadness for the fist time about her condition after she met her biological mother)