Monday, January 31, 2022

Quote of the Day

I am a feminist, but I was raised in a sexist culture.  I was raised in a world that tried to convince me through media, religious organizations, history books, and the beauty industry that female bodies are worth less than male bodies and that certain types of female bodies (thin, tall, young) are worth more than other types of female bodies.  The images of women's bodies for sale, the onslaught of emaciated women's bodies held up as the pinnacle of female achievement, and the pervasise message that women exist to please men is the air I breathed.  I lived in a mine, and the toxin was misogyny.  I got sick from it.  Not because I'm a bad, sexist person, but because I was breathing misogynistic air.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 215-216

Sunday, January 30, 2022

Quote of the Day

... we can be good, kind, justice-loving people in our hearts and minds -- but if we live in America, we're poisoned by the racist air we breathe.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 215

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Quote of the Day

When I started to really listen and think more deeply about the experiences of people of color and other marginalized people in our country, I felt like I did when I first quit drinking: increasingly uncomfortable as the truth agitated my comfortable numbness.  I felt ashamed as I began to learn all the ways my ignorance and silence had hurt other people.  I felt exhausted because there was so much more to unlearn, so many amends to be made, and so much work to do.  Just like in my early days of sobriety from booze, in my early days of waking up to white supremacy, I felt shaky, jumpy, and agitated as I slowly surrendered the privilege of not knowing.  It was a painful unbecoming.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 210

Friday, January 28, 2022

Quote of the Day

With a [social media] feed filled with white voices, faces that looked like my own, and articles that reflected experiences like mine, it was easy to believe that, for the most part, things were fine.  Once I committed myself to beginning each day by reading the perspectives of black and brown people, I learned that everything was, and always has been, quite far from fine.  I learned about rampant police brutality, the preschool-to-prison pipeline, the subhuman conditions of immigrant detainment centers, the pillaging of native lands.  I began to widen.  I was unlearning the whitewashed version of American history I'd been indoctrinated into believing.  I was discovering that I was not who I imagined myself to be.  I was learning that my country was not what I had been taught it was.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 209

Thursday, January 27, 2022

Quote of the Day

So, if I want to know how I'd have felt about Dr. King back (in the 60s), I can't ask myself how I feel about him now; instead I have to ask myself: How do I feel about Colin Kaepernick now?  If I want to know how I'd have felt about the Freedom Riders back then, I can't ask myself how I feel about them now; instead, I have to ask myself: How do I feel about Black Lives Matter now?  If I want to know how I'd have shown up in the last civil rights era, I have to ask myself: How am I showing up today, in this civil rights era?

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 209

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Quote of the Day

I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate.  I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Quote of the Day

May we all live in communities where every person's truest Self is both held and free.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 203

Monday, January 24, 2022

Quote of the Day

The truth is that it matters not at all what you think of my life -- but it matters supremely what you think of your own.  Judgment is just another cage we live in so we don't have to feel, know, and imagine.  Judgment is self-abandonment.  You are not here to waste your time deciding whether my life is true and beautiful enough for you.  You are here to decide if your life, relationships, and world are true and beautiful enough for you.  And if they are not and you dare to admit they are not, you must decide if you have the guts, the right -- perhaps even the duty -- to burn to the ground that which is not true and beautiful enough and get started building what is.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 201

Sunday, January 23, 2022

Quote of the Day

Look, CDs will never be as sexy as vinyl albums.  I get that.  They never even got a groovy nickname, like how record fiends talk about "platters" and "white labels" and "stacks of wax."  If you're merely looking for fan merch to display on your shelf, a 12-inch LP sleeve has more style.  Really, there's only one thing CDs have ever done right, which is make music.  They get the job done, which is why they're still around -- the Hyman Roth of audio formats.  And that's why, for some of us, the CD has a special 70-minute place in our heart that nothing else can fill.

-- Rob Sheffield, "Jewel-Box Heroes: Why the CD Revival Is Finally Here"

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Quote of the Day

Like the physical book, the physical [compact] disc just transports you deeper into the story.

-- Rob Sheffield, "Jewel-Box Heroes: Why the CD Revival Is Finally Here"

Friday, January 21, 2022

Quote of the Day

We hung up, and I thought: My mother loves me.  And she disagrees with me about what is best for me.  I am going to have to decide who I trust more: my mother or myself.  For the first time in my life, I decided to trust myself -- even though that meant moving in direct opposition to my parents.  I decided to please myself instead of my parents.  I decided to become responsible for my own life, my own joy, my own family.  And I decided to do it with love.  That is when I became an adult.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 191

Thursday, January 20, 2022

Quote of the Day

What if we decided that it is strength -- not weakness -- to let other people's pain pierce us?  What if we stopped our lives and the world for things that are worth stopping for? 

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 182

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Quote of the Day

Privilege is being born on third base.  Ignorant privilege is thinking you're there because you hit a triple.  Malicious privilege is complaining that those starving outside the ballpark aren't waiting patiently enough.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 181

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Quote of the Day

Trying to learn about sex from porn is like trying to learn about the mountains by sniffing one of those air fresheners they sell at the gas station.  When you finally get to the real mountains and breathe in that pure, wild air -- you might be confused.  You might wish it smelled like that fake, manufactured air-freshener version.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 176

Monday, January 17, 2022

Quote of the Day

Listen, I know plenty of adults who find certain kinds of porn to be liberating, but the porn the kids come across on the internet is misogynistic poison.  We have to explain that to them so they don't learn that sex is about violence.  I just think that saying anything at all -- even if we say it awkward and stumbling and afraid while our kids roll their eyes -- is better than saying nothing at all.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 175-176

Sunday, January 16, 2022

Quote of the Day

Our boys are just as human as our girls are.  They need permission, opportunities, and safe places to share their humanity.  Let's encourage real, vulnerable conversations among our sons and their friends.  Let's ask about their feelings, relationships, hopes, and dreams so they don't become middle-aged men who feel permitted to discuss only sports, sex, news, and the weather.  Let's help our boys become adults who don't have to carry life alone.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 169

Saturday, January 15, 2022

Quote of the Day

When we say, "Girls are nurturing and boys are ambitious.  Girls are soft and boys are tough.  Girls are emotional and boys are stoic," we are not telling truths, we are sharing beliefs -- beliefs that have become mandates.  If these statements seem true, it's because everyone has been so well programmed.  Human qualities are not gendered.  What is gendered is permission to express certain traits.  Why?  Why would our culture prescribe such strict gender roles?  And why would it be so important for our culture to label all tenderness and mercy as feminine?  Because disallowing the expression of these qualities is the way the status quo keeps its power.  In a culture as imbalanced as ours -- in which a few hoard billions while others starve, in which wars are fought for oil, in which children are shot and killed while gun manufacturers and politicians collect the blood money -- mercy, humanity, and vulnerability cannot be tolerated.  Mercy and empathy are great threats to an unjust society.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 164-165

Friday, January 14, 2022

Quote of the Day

... people who do not suck are people who have failed, dusted themselves off, and tried again.  People who do not suck are people who have been hurt, so they have empathy for others who are hurt.  People who do not suck are those who have learned from their own mistakes by dealing with the consequences.  People who do not suck are people who have learned how to win with humility and how to lose with dignity.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 155

Thursday, January 13, 2022

Quote of the Day

There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.

-- Carl Jung

Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Quote of the Day

What women want is good.  What women want is beautiful.  And what women want is dangerous, but not to women.  Not to the common good.  What women want is a threat to the injustice of the status quo.  If we unlocked and unleashed ourselves: Imbalanced relationships would be equalized.  Children would be fed.  Corrupt governments would topple.  Wars would end.  Civilizations would be transformed.  If women trusted and claimed their desires, the world as we know it would crumble.  Perhaps that is precisely what needs to happen so we can rebuild truer, more beautiful lives, relationships, families, and nations in their place.  Maybe Eve was never meant to be our warning.  Maybe she was meant to be our model.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 121-122

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Quote of the Day

... I learned that my anger never meant that there was something wrong with me.  It meant that there was something wrong.  Out there.  Something I might have the power to change.  I stopped being a quiet peacekeeper and started being a loud peacemaker.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 116

Monday, January 10, 2022

Quote of the Day

(Women) weren't born distrusting and fearing ourselves.  That was part of our taming.  We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous.  They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves.  So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition.  Instead, we lock away our true selves.  Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless.  Can you imagine?  The epitome of womanhood is to lose one's self completely.  That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture.  Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 115-116

Sunday, January 9, 2022

Quote of the Day

The lesson of Adam and Eve -- the first formative story I was told about God and a woman -- was this: When a woman wants more, she defies God, betrays her partner, curses her family, and destroys the world.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 115

Saturday, January 8, 2022

Quote of the Day

The beauty industry convinces us that our thighs, frizz, skin, fingernails, lips, eyelashes, leg hair, and wrinkles are repulsive and must be covered and manipulated, so we learn to not trust the bodies we live in.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 115

Friday, January 7, 2022

Quote of the Day

Why do women find it honorable to dismiss ourselves?  Why do we decide that denying our longing is the responsible thing to do?  Why do we believe that what will thrill and fulfill us will hurt our people?  Why do we mistrust ourselves so completely?  Here's why: Because our culture was built upon and benefits from the control of women.  The way power justifies controlling a group is by conditioning the masses to believe that the group cannot be trusted.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 114-115

Thursday, January 6, 2022

Quote of the Day

Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable.  Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.

-- Elizabeth Gilbert

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Quote of the Day

She was not complying and she was not rebelling.  She was creating something new.  She was original.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 109

Tuesday, January 4, 2022

Quote of the Day

If you keep living with confidence, the rest of your life will unfold exactly as it is meant to.  It won't always be comfortable.  Some will recognize your brave; others won't.  Some will understand and like you; others won't.  But the way others respond to your confidence is not your business.  Your business is to stay loyal to you.  That way, you will always know that those who do like and love you are really your people.  You'll never be forced to hide or act in order to keep people if you don't hide or act to get them.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 106