Quote of the Day

In the course of time, I realized more and more clearly how the effort of loving someone who had almost ruined my life was doing me serious harm.  It was estranging me from my own truth, forcing me to deceive myself, constraining me to adopt a role my parents foisted on to me so early -- the role of the "good girl" forced to comply with emotional demands masquerading as upbringing and morality.  As I gradually learned to be true to myself and succeeded in admitting my own feelings, the language of my body spoke out more and more clearly and guided me toward decisions that did it good and helped it to express its natural needs.  I was able to stop joining in other people's games, to stop telling myself that my parents had their good sides, to stop confusing myself over and over again as I did when I was a child.  I was able to decide in favor of adulthood.  And the confusion disappeared.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 113

Quote of the Day

Hope is a function of struggle.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 239

Quote of the Day

I worshipped dead men for their strength,
Forgetting I was strong.

-- Vita Sackville-West

Quote of the Day

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded.  It's a relationship between equals.  Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.  Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

-- Pema Chodron

Quote of the Day

I could see that, because the Gandhians listened, they were listened to.  Because they depended on generosity, they created generosity.  Because they walked a nonviolent path, they made one seem possible.  This was the practical organizing wisdom they taught me:

• If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them.
• If you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live.
• If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye-to-eye.

 -- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. 37

Quote of the Day

At the end of the day, songwriting is conjury.  The conjurer is often as mystified as anyone as to where our creations come from.  We often can't explain how we do what we do because we don't fully understand it ourselves.  But in the right mood, with the right frame of mind, there's a feeling of being an antenna, receiving, then transmitting, receiving, then transmitting.  Great songs are more than words and music.  Welded together just right, they become emotional electricity.

-- Mary Gauthier

Quote of the Day

You are entitled to live by the codes and beliefs that you accept freely as an adult instead of the ones that you assumed automatically and unquestioningly long ago.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 239

Quote of the Day

If, as small children, we have to deal with adults who have never tried to clarify their own feelings, this can expose us to a species of chaos that is unsettling in the extreme.  To escape from these feelings of confusion and uncertainty, we activate the mechanism of repression and disassociation.  We feel no fear, we love our parents, we trust them, and we try to live up to their expectations, so that they can be pleased with us.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 106-107

Quote of the Day

You must clean and arrange your studio in a way that will forward a quiet state of mind. This cautious care of atmosphere is really needed to show respect for the work. Respect for art work and everything connected with it, one’s own and that of everyone else, must be maintained and forwarded. 

-- Agnes Martin

Quote of the Day

One of the biggest surprises in this research was learning that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing.  In fact, fitting in is one of the greatest barriers to belonging.  Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be in order to be accepted.  Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 231-232

Quote of the Day

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

-- Ursula Le Guin

Quote of the Day

Basic knowledge of music and melody is helpful, but songwriting doesn't require a music education.  Emotional literacy is what matters.  There are generations of timeless songs "written" by illiterate songwriters, and brilliant songwriters who don't play any instruments at all.  Irving Berlin, the composer of countless beloved standards couldn't read or write music.  He played almost entirely in the key of F-sharp, allowing him to stay on the black keys as much as possible.

-- Mary Gauthier

Quote of the Day

Whether by dowry murders in India, honor killings in Egypt, or domestic violence in the United States, records show that women are most likely to be beaten or killed at home and by men they know.  Statistically speaking, home is an even more dangerous place for women than the road.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. xxv

Quote of the Day

When you decide to leave or cut off from an important person in your life, you enter a state of crisis -- a time of intense emotional upheaval and uncertainty.  But crisis is not just a time of danger.  When managed thoughtfully and with courage, crisis is also a marvelous opportunity for personal growth and a better life.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 232

Quote of the Day

What these adults need then in an enlightened witness who can accompany them on the road to their own truth, help them embark on a process in the course of which they will finally permit themselves the always-wanted but always-denied things: trust, respect, and love for themselves.  We must abandon the expectation that someday the parents will give us what they withheld in childhood.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 101

Quote of the Day

I think most of us feel like fakes.  At some point "they" will get onto us and expose us for what we are: know-nothings, hustlers, and charlatans. It’s not a totally destructive feeling.  It tends to keep us honest.

-- Sidney Lumet, Making Movies 

Quote of the Day

Daring greatly means finding our own path and respecting what that search looks like for other folks.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 231

Quote of the Day

One of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. xxiii

Quote of the Day

On the other side of the fear of disapproval is the freedom to imagine and create a life that really belongs to you.  I'm not going to pretend it's easy, but every time you make the commitment to steer your own ship, you take a giant step toward shaping a life that reflects what you know and what you believe is right for you -- no matter what anyone else may think or say.  When you do that, you'll be able to kick your addiction to approval.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 227

Quote of the Day

It is one thing to complain about one's parents' deeds and quite another to take the facts of the matter fully and completely seriously.  The latter course arouses the infant's fear of punishment.  Accordingly, many prefer to leave their earliest perceptions in a state of repression, to avoid looking the truth in the face, to extenuate their parents' deeds, and to reconcile themselves with the idea of forgiveness.  But this attitude merely serves to perpetuate the futile expectations we have entertained since our childhood.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 99-100

Quote of the Day

If you pull the church out of the whole equation, it's highly likely that there never would have been a Civil War.  Southern clergy had no doubt that slavery was not a sin.

-- Harry Stout, "How White Christians Used the Bible -- and Confederate Flag -- to Oppress Black People"

Quote of the Day

The power of owning our stories, even the difficult ones, is that we get to write the ending.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 228

Quote of the Day

Hope is a form of planning.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. xxii

Quote of the Day

Hate generalizes, love specifies.

-- Robin Morgan

Quote of the Day

If we allow other people's approval or disapproval to define us, we set ourselves up to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with us whenever we incur displeasure.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 225

Quote of the Day

The inquiry into the childhood patterns, the abuse, and the humiliation that have contributed to turning normal children into monsters is still, however, a matter of public neglect.  These monsters and the people who have directed their feelings of anger and rage against themselves and have fallen ill for that reason have one thing in common: they ward off any kind of accusation from the parents who once maltreated them so severely.  They do not know what that treatment has done to them, they do not know how much they have suffered from it.  Above all, they do not want to know.  They see it as something beneficial, something inflicted on them for their own good.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 95-96

Quote of the Day

The important thing to know about worthiness is that it doesn't have prerequisites.  Most of us, on the other hand, have a long list of worthiness prerequisites -- qualifiers that we've inherited, learned, and unknowingly picked up along the way.  Most of these prerequisites fall in the categories of accomplishments, acquisitions, and external acceptance.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 220-221

Quote of the Day

What we're told about this country is way too limited by generalities, sound bites, and even the supposedly enlightened idea that there are two sides to every question.  In fact, many questions have three or seven or a dozen sides.  Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two, and those who don't.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. xx

Quote of the Day

If you get stronger, healthier and more confident and the other person doesn't like it, what does that say about the quality of the relationship that you're trying so hard to save?  What is it based on?

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 221

Quote of the Day

Clearly religious conscience and authority of God in itself are never enough and have been used to devastating effect in America and around the world. There has to be another test and Martin Luther King offered the most concise example of that. His entire life's work was to make the world more equal, more just, and to extend Jesus' vision of the Kingdom of God to all people. He was guided by a deeply spiritual conviction of love that transformed many hearts and he is the highest example of a Christian that America has produced. Kim Davis is going to jail for precisely the opposite reason. Instead of striving for a more inclusive world, she is going to jail in her desire to exclude. Instead of seeking justice for all, she was the obstacle to justice for gay couples. Instead of showing God's love for all, she is stingy in her understanding of love. Her actions, although she claims they are guided by God and love, have bruised and hurt the very people she was elected to serve. Here's a simple guide: If your love feels like hate then it is not love. If you are using God to denigrate and humiliate then it is not God.

-- Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, "No, Kim Davis Is Not Martin Luther King, Jr."

Quote of the Day

The fact is that an unscrupulous tyrant mobilizes the suppressed fears and anxieties of those who were beaten as children but have never been able to accuse their own fathers of doing so.  Their loyalty to these fathers is unswerving, despite the torments suffered at their hands.  Every tyrant symbolizes such a father, the figure whom the abused children remain attached to with every fiber of their being, hoping that one day they will be able to transform him into a loving parent by remaining blind.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 92