Glennon Doyle Quotes

The facts were right there in front of me to see. But the truth was right there inside of me to feel.

I've done my research and learned this : Ten is when we learn how to be good girls and real boys.Ten is when children begin to hide who they are in order to become what the world expects them to be.Right around ten is when we begin to internalize our formal taming.Ten is when the world sat me down, told me to be quiet, and pointed toward my cages: These are the feelings you are allowed to express.This is how a woman should act.This is the body you must strive for.These are the things you will believe.These are the people you can love.Those are the people you should fear.This is the kind of life you are supposed to want.Make yourself fit.You'll be uncomfortable at first, but don't worry-eventually you'll forget you're caged.Soon this will just feel like: life.

The building of the true and beautiful means the destruction of the good enough. Rebirth means death. Once a truer, more beautiful vision is born inside us, life is in the direction of that vision. Holding on to what is no longer true enough is not safe; it's the riskiest move because it is the certain death of everything that was meant to be. We are alive only to the degree to which we are willing to be annihilated. Our next life will always cost us this one. If we are truly alive, we are constantly losing who we just were, what we just built, what we just believed, what we just knew to be true.

I have lost identities, beliefs, and relationships it has hurt to lose. I have learned that when I live from my emotions, knowing, and imagination, I am always losing. What I lose is always what is no longer true enough so that I can take full hold of what is.

If you wish me well but vote against my family being protected by the law, you do not love me. Thank you for understanding that to love me as yourself means to want for me and for my family every good thing you want for yourself and your family.

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.

Every white person who shows up and tells the truth — because it's her duty as a member of our human family — is going to have her racism called out. She will have to accept that others will disagree with how she's showing up and that they will have every right to disagree. She will need to learn to withstand people's anger, knowing that much of it is real and true and necessary. She will need to accept that one of the privileges she's letting burn is her emotional comfort. She will need to remind herself that being called a racist is actually not the worst thing. The worst thing is privately hiding her racism to stay safe, liked, and comfortable while others suffer and die. There are worse things than being criticized — like being a coward.

Returning to ourselves is confusing at first. It's not as simple as listening for the voices inside of us. Because sometimes the voices inside of us, which we've assumed speak Truth, are just the voices of human beings who told us what to believe. Often the internal voice telling us who God is and what God approves of is not God; it's our indoctrination. It's an echo of the voice of a teacher, a parent, a preacher — someone who has claimed to represent God to us. Many of those people have been well meaning, and others have only sought to control us. Either way, not a single one of them has been God's appointed spokesperson. Not a single one of them has more God in her than you do. There is no church that owns God. There is no religion that owns God. There are no gatekeepers. None of this is that easy. There is no outsourcing your faith. There is just you and God. Some of the hardest and most important work of our lives is learning to separate the voices of teachers from wisdom, propaganda from truth, fear from love and in this case: the voices of God's self-appointed representatives from the voice of God Herself. When choosing between something you Know and something other people taught you to believe, choose what you Know. As Whitman said, "Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul." Having the courage to dismiss what insults your soul is a matter of life or death.

The anxiety that makes it difficult to exist in my own skin also makes it difficult to exist in a world where so may people are in so much pain - and that makes me a relentless activist.

The thing that breaks your heart is the very thing you were born to help heal. Every world changer's work begins with a broken heart.

Since it doesn't use words to explain itself to me, I quit using words to explain myself to the world. This is the most revolutionary thing a woman can do: the next precise thing, one thing at a time, without asking permission or offering explanation. This way of life is thrilling.

Being human is not hard because you're doing it wrong, it's hard because you're doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.

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.

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.

they're selling is not real sex. It lacks connection, respect, and vulnerability, which is what makes sex sexy. "This kind of porn is sold by people who are like drug dealers. They sell a product that fills people with a rush that feels like joy for a short while but then becomes a killer of real joy. Over time people prefer the rush of drugs to the real joy of life. Many who start watching porn very young will get hooked on the rush. Eventually they will find it hard to enjoy real sex with real human beings. "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. "We don't want you to stay away from porn while you're young because sex is bad. We want you to stay away from porn because real sex — with humanity and vulnerability and love — is indescribably good. We don't want fake sex ruining"}

The truth of my thirties was: Stay on your mat, Glennon. The staying is making you. The truth of my forties is: I'm made. I will not stay, not ever again — in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself. When my body tells me the truth, I'll believe it. I trust myself now, so I will no longer suffer voluntarily or silently or for long. I'll look at those women to my left and right who must stay, because it's that time for them, because they have to know what love and God and freedom are not before they can know what love and God and freedom are. Because they want to know. Because they are warriors.