Quote of the Day

I was taken with the idea that a deep, systematic, and straightforward wisdom on how to live the best life for myself (and the planet) could be presented before me in a direct, tangible, and comprehensive way.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. xi

Quote of the Day

We may believe that we can make another person's troublesome behavior disappear if we just ignore it or don't make a fuss, but the message we send when we're not forthright about what's unacceptable is "It worked.  Do it again."

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 124

Quote of the Day

The body is the guardian of the truth, our truth, because it carries the experience of a lifetime and ensures that we can live with the truth of our organism.  With the aid of physical symptoms it forces us to engage cognitively with this truth so that we can communicate harmoniously with the child within, the child who lives on inside us, the child who was once spurned, abused, and humiliated.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 31

Quote of the Day

My favorite kind of musical experience is to feel afterward that your heart is filled up and transformed, like it is pumping a whole new kind of blood in your veins.  This is what it is to be a fan: curious, open, desiring for connection, to feel like art has chosen you, claimed you as its witness.

-- Carrie Brownstein, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, p. 5

Quote of the Day

What the persecution complex suggests is that conservative Christians only care about bullying, oppression, and discrimination when it happens to them.  If it happens to LGBT people, or to people in other religious minority groups, it is of little concern (or is tacitly supported).  Compassion and advocacy are rooted in self-interest alone and Christian privilege is guarded ruthlessly, even if it comes at the expense of others.

-- Rachel Held Evans, "For the sake of the gospel, drop the persecution complex"

Quote of the Day

Sharing yourself to teach or move a process forward can be healthy and effective, but disclosing information as a way to work through your personal stuff is inappropriate and unethical.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 162

Quote of the Day

Every day of our lives, we teach people how to treat us by showing them what we will and won't accept, what we refuse to confront, what we'll let slide.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 124

Quote of the Day

Probably every child who has suffered abuse must assume an attitude like this in order to survive.  These children reinterpret their perceptions in a desperate attempt to see as good and beneficial things that outside observers would immediately classify as crimes.  Children have no choice.  They must repress their true feelings if they have no "helping witness" to turn to and are helplessly exposed to their persecutors.  Later, as adults lucky enough to encounter "enlightened witnesses," they do have a choice.  Then they can admit the truth, their truth; they can stop pitying and "understanding" their persecutors, stop trying to feel their unsustainable, disassociated emotions, and roundly denounce the things that have been done to them.  This step brings immense relief for the body.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 27

Quote of the Day

The role of the fan is still to be a participant, and to participate is to grant yourself permission to immerse, to willingly, gladly, efface and subsume yourself for the sake of the larger meaning but also to provide meaning.  It's symbiotic.

-- Carrie Brownstein, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, p. 4-5

Quote of the Day

Facing disagreement is not the same as facing persecution.  Conservative Christians are right about one thing: public opinion has shifted on same-sex marriage (particularly within the Church), and this means they are more likely to encounter pushback whey they insist same-sex marriage ought to be illegal.  Facebook friends may argue with them.  Comedians may satirize them.  Bloggers may write posts like these disagreeing with them.  But to conflate such disagreement with the sort of persecution Jesus warned his disciples about is not only myopic, but also a slap in the face to those Christians who face very real persecution around the world.

-- Rachel Held Evans, "For the sake of the gospel, drop the persecution complex"

Quote of the Day

I don't tell stories or share vulnerabilities with the public until I've worked through them with the people I love.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 161

Quote of the Day

Your fight to hold on to what you know, or even just to realize that you've locked away the perceptive center of yourself, may not be as dramatic as Roberta's but it's every bit as important.  Just as owning her own truth was a matter of psychic survival for Roberta, for most of us it's the only way to end emotional blackmail.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 122

Quote of the Day

It is in this way that dictators are born; these are people with a deep-seated contempt for everyone else, people who were never respected as children and thus do their utmost to earn that respect at a later stage with the assistance of the gigantic power apparatus they have built up around them.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 28

Quote of the Day

Nostalgia is so certain: the sense of familiarity it instills makes us feel like we know ourselves, like we've lived.

-- Carrie Brownstein, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, p. 4

Quote of the Day

Contrary to what you may have read on Facebook, pastors and priests will not be forced to marry same-sex couples or be fined for refusing to...just as they are not presently forced to marry interfaith couples if their tradition opposes it, or cohabitating couples if their tradition opposes it, or divorcees if their tradition opposes it, or interracial couple[s] if their tradition opposes it.  That religious freedom has, and very likely will, be preserved.  Just take interracial marriage, for example.  It's been 48 years since the Supreme Court ruled that the laws in sixteen states prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional.  At the time, only about 25% of the American public supported interracial marriage, with many citing religious reasons for opposing it.  While public opinion has (thankfully) changed, the right of a clergy member to refuse to marry an interracial couple hasn't.  Just as a pastor can still refuse to marry an interracial couple, he can still refuse to marry a same-sex couple without fear of government intervention.  There is no indication whatsoever this will change. 

-- Rachel Held Evans, "For the sake of the gospel, drop the persecution complex"

Quote of the Day

Judgment exacerbates disconnection.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 161

Quote of the Day

None of us likes anger, but if we believe that it's always up to us to avoid it, or to squelch it to keep peace at any price, the range of actions available to us is about as wide as a tightrope: we can back down, give in, placate -- all the things that tell blackmailers how to get what they want from us.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 112

Quote of the Day

My belief is that the time has come for us to take the injuries of childhood and their consequences seriously ... This does not mean that we have to repay our parents' cruelty in kind.  It means that we must see them as they were, and recognize the way they treated us when we were small.  Then we can spare ourselves and our children the repetition of such patterns of behavior.  We need to free ourselves of the "internalized parents" carrying on their deadly work within us.  This is the only way we can say yes to our own lives and learn to respect ourselves.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 26

Quote of the Day

My story starts with me as a fan.  And to be a fan is to know that loving trumps being beloved.

-- Carrie Brownstein, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, p. 3

Quote of the Day

Living in a pluralistic society that also grants freedom and civil rights protection to those with whom one disagrees is not the same as religious persecution.  And crying persecution every time one doesn't get one's way is an insult to the very real religious persecution happening in the world today.
 
-- Rachel Held Evans, "For the sake of the gospel, drop the persecution complex"

Quote of the Day

Using vulnerability is not the same thing as being vulnerable; it's the opposite -- it's armor.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 161

Quote of the Day

Many of us live as though there were an 11th Commandment -- "Thou shalt not get angry" -- and a 12th -- "Thou shalt not get other people angry with you."

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 108

Quote of the Day

Sharing civil rights with other people is not the same as being persecuted by them.

-- Rachel Held Evans, "For the sake of the gospel, drop the persecution complex"

Quote of the Day

Only as adults do we have a choice.  But we often behave as if we were still children who never had the right to question the commandments laid down to them by their parents.  As conscious adults we have the right to pose questions, even though we know how much those questions would have shocked our parents when we were children.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 25

Quote of the Day

When we share vulnerability, especially shame stories, with someone with whom there is no connectivity, their emotional (and sometimes physical) response is often to wince, as if we have shone a floodlight in their eyes.  Instead of a strand of delicate lights, our shared vulnerability is blinding, harsh, and unbearable.  If we are on the receiving end, our hands fly up and cover our faces, we squeeze our entire faces (not just our eyes) shut, and look away.  When it's over, we feel depleted, confused, and sometimes even manipulated.  Not exactly the empathetic response that those telling the story were hoping for.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 160

Quote of the Day

There's nothing wrong with wanting approval, or asking for it.  But approval junkies need a constant supply, and judge that they've failed if they can't get it.  They believe they're not OK unless someone else says they are, and their sense of security depends almost entirely on outside validation.  The approval junkie's motto is "If I'm not getting approval, I've done something wrong."  Or worse yet, "If I'm not getting approval there's something wrong with me."

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 105

Quote of the Day

There are no promises.  Look deeply at joy and sorrow, at laughing and crying, at hoping and fearing, at all that lives and dies.  What truly heals is gratitude and tenderness.

-- Pema Chodron