Quote of the Day

The Europeans had done slavery differently.  They had set up plantations in the countries they had colonized, therefore not bringing their dirty work home ... The Americans, by bringing all their stolen people to the American continent, had done the equivalent of burgling a house, then keeping the stolen goods in their own home.  The Brits and the Europeans had also burgled but kept the stolen goods in someone else's house.  If you'd gone to England in the 1700s and shouted, "Hey!  Thieves!  You have stolen Black people," they could have smugly waived their arms across the quiet English countryside and said, "But where?"  They had separated themselves from the evidence of their misdeeds.

-- Gina Yashere, Cack-Handed, p. 84

Quote of the Day

The missionaries' main purpose [in Nigeria] was to convert as many people as possible to Christianity while also educating them from a Eurocentric perspective, turning them away from their apparently primitive and barbaric way of life, plus getting them to give up land that was theirs to house churches they never knew they needed.  This education included learning the Bible.  The same Bible that had been used to subjugate Africans who were stolen and taken abroad.  The same Bible with all that worshipping of an impossibly blond and blue-eyed Jesus, with Black people being cursed as descendants of Ham.  And with all that obey-your-master, turn-the-other-cheek shit.  That stuff that keeps you accepting horrendous abuses in this life with a hope of ascending to heaven in the end.

-- Gina Yashere, Cack-Handed, p. 60

Quote of the Day

When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible.  They taught us to pray with our eyes closed.  When we opened our eyes, they had the land and we had the Bible.

-- Jomo Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya

Quote of the Day

The moment anyone tries to demean or degrade you in any way, you have to know how great you are.  Nobody would bother to beat you down if you were not a threat.

-- Cicely Tyson

Quote of the Day

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.

-- Harry Truman

Quote of the Day

That night I told Abby, "I'm not going to spend one more second explaining myself or justifying our relationship.  Explaining is fear preparing its case, and we are not on trial.  No one can take what we have.  I can't convince my parents that we're okay by talking incessantly about how okay we are.  I think the only way to convince anybody you are okay is just to go about being okay and let them witness it.  I don't want to leave our island to be an evangelist for us anymore.  It's too tiring, and every time I go and try to convince other people that we're fine, I'm not here, with you -- being fine..."

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 192

Quote of the Day

I think we are only bitter about other people's joy in direct proportion to our commitment to keep joy from ourselves.  The more often I do things I want to do, the less bitter I am at people for doing what they want to do.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 307-308

Quote of the Day

I don't want to find comfort in the weakness and pain of other women.  I want to find inspiration in the joy and success of other women.  Because that makes me happier, and because if we keep disliking and tearing down strong women instead of loving them, supporting them, and voting for them, we won't have any strong women left.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 286

Quote of the Day

The world humility derives from the Latin word humilitas, which means "of the earth."  To be humble is to be grounded in knowing who you are.  It implies the responsibility to become what you were meant to become -- to grow, to reach, to fully bloom as high and strong and grand as you were created to.  It is not honorable for a tree to wilt and shrink and disappear.  It's not honorable for a woman to, either.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 286

Quote of the Day

Playing dumb, weak, and silly is a disservice to yourself and to me and to the world.  Every time you pretend to be less than you are, you steal permission from other women to exist fully.  Don't mistake modesty for humility.  Modesty is a giggly lie.  An act.  A mask.  A fake game.  We have no time for that.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 286

Quote of the Day

I have been conditioned to mistrust and dislike strong, confident, happy girls and women.  We all have.  Studies prove that the more powerful, successful, and happy a man becomes, the more people trust and like him.  But the more powerful and happy a woman becomes, the less people like and trust her.  So we proclaim: Women are entitled to take their rightful place!  Then, when a woman does take her rightful place, our first reaction is: She's so...entitled.  We become people who say of confident women, "I don't know, I can't explain it --- it's just something about her.  I just don't like her.  I can't put my finger on why."  I can put my finger on why: It's because our training is kicking in through our subconscious.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 285

Quote of the Day

I've also learned that while choosing joy makes it easier for me to love myself and my life, it seems to make it harder for the world to love me ... I have noticed that it seems easier for the world to love a suffering woman than it is for the world to love a joyful, confident woman.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 284

Quote of the Day

... when I turn on the news or watch closely how people treat each other -- I raise my eyebrows and think: Actually, maybe it's not me.  Maybe it's you, world.  Maybe my inability to adapt to the world is not because I'm crazy but because I'm paying attention.  Maybe it's not insane to reject the world as it is.  Maybe the real insanity is surrendering to the world as it is.  Maybe pretending that things around here are just fine is no badge of honor I want to wear.  Maybe it's exactly right to be a little crazy.  Maybe the truth is: World, you need my poetry.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 280-281

Quote of the Day

The change that happens to people who really sit in their pain -- whether it's a sliver of envy lasting an hour or a canyon of grief lasting decades -- it's revolutionary.  When that kind of transformation happens, it becomes impossible to fit into your old conversations or relationships or patterns or thoughts or life anymore.  You are like a snake trying to fit back into old, dead skin or a butterfly trying to crawl back into its cocoon.  You look around and see everything freshly, with the new eyes you have earned for yourself.  There is no going back.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 271-272

Quote of the Day

Good art originates not from the desire to show off but from the desire to show yourself.  Good art always comes from our desperate desire to breathe, to be seen, to be loved.  In everyday life, we are used to seeing only the shiny outer layer of folks.  Art makes us less lonely because it always comes from the desperate center of the artist -- and each of our centers is desperate.  That's why good art is such a relief.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 253

Quote of the Day

My evangelical friends insist to me that their opposition to abortion and queerness was born in them.  They are sincere and convinced.  But I wonder.  We all believe our religious beliefs were written on our hearts and in the stars.  We never stop to consider that most of the memos we live by were actually written by highly motivated men.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 242-243

Quote of the Day

Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan -- who, as governor of California, had signed into law one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country -- began using the language from the new memo.  Evangelicals threw their weight behind him, and voted in a bloc for the first time to elect President Reagan.  The Religious Right was born.  The face of the movement was the "pro-life and pro-family values" stance of millions, but the blood running through the movement's veins was the racism and greed of a few.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 242

Quote of the Day

I did my research.  Turns out, the memo (my former preacher) was trying to pass me -- "A good Christian bases her faith on disapproving of gays and abortion" --started being issued only forty years ago.  In the 1970s, a few rich, powerful, white, (outwardly) straight men got worried about losing their right to continue racially segregating their private Christian schools and maintaining their tax-exempt status.  Those men began to feel their money and power being threatened by the civil rights movement.  In order to regain control, they needed to identify an issue that would be emotional and galvanizing enough to unite and politically activate their evangelical followers for the first time.  They decided to focus on abortion.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 241

Quote of the Day

The thing that gets me thinking and questioning most deeply is a leader who warns me not to think or question.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 240

Quote of the Day

... what if I demand freedom not because I was "born this way" and "can't help it" but because I can do whatever I choose to do with my love and my body from year to year, moment to moment -- because I'm a grown woman who does not need any excuse to live however I want to live and love whomever I want to love?  What if I don't need your permission slip because I'm already free?

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 228-229

Quote of the Day

... letting old structures burn can feel uncomfortable and disorienting.  Rumbling freedom is scary because at first it feels like chaos.  Pronouns and bathrooms and girls taking girls to prom, oh my!  But "progress" is just perpetually undoing our no-longer-true-enough systems in order to create new ones that more closely fit people as they really are.  People aren't changing, after all.  It's just that for the first time, there's enough freedom for people to stop changing who they are.  Progress is the acknowledgment of what is and what has always been.  Progress is always a returning.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 224

Quote of the Day

Blessed are those brave enough to make things awkward, for they wake us up and move us forward.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 222

Quote of the Day

In America, there are not two kinds of people, racists and nonracists.  There are three kinds of people: those poisoned by racism and actively choosing to spread it; those poisoned by racism and actively trying to detox; and those poisoned by racism who deny its very existence inside them.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 218

Quote of the Day

We are not going to get the racism out of us until we start thinking about racism like we think about misogyny.  Until we consider racism as not just a personal moral failing but as the air we've been breathing.  How many images of black bodies being thrown to the ground have I ingested?  How many photographs of jails filled with black bodies have I seen?  How many racist jokes have I swallowed?  We have been deluged by stories and images meant to convince us that black men are dangerous, black women are dispensable, and black bodies are worth less than white bodies.  These messages are in the air and we've just been breathing.  We must decide that admitting to being poisoned by racism is not a moral failing -- but denying we have poison in us certainly is.

-- Glennon Doyle, Untamed, p. 217-218

Hearing Nikole Hannah-Jones

Last night, I was pleased to attend Grand Rapids Community College's Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Diversity Lecture Series, featuring award-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones virtually, via Zoom.