Glennon Doyle Quotes

Be careful with the stories you tell about yourself

There is no one way to live, love, raise children, arrange a family, run a school, a community, a nation. The norms were created by somebody, and each of us is somebody. We can make our own normal.

So I will commit to showing up with deep humility and doing the best I can. I will keep getting it wrong, which is the closest I can come to getting it right. When I am corrected, I will stay open and keep learning. Not because I want to be the wokest woke who ever woked. But because people's children are dying of racism, and there is no such thing as other people's children. Hidden racism is destroying and ending lives. It's making police officers kill black men at three times the rate of white men. It's making lawmakers limit funding for clean water and poison children. It's making doctors allow black women to die during or after childbirth at three to four times the rate of white women. It's making school officials suspend and expel black students at three times the rate of white students. It's making judges incarcerate black drug users at nearly six times the rate of white drug users. And — because of my complicity in this system that dehumanizes others — it is dehumanizing me. The fact that the programmed poison of racism was pumped into us may not be our fault, but getting it out is sure as hell our responsibility.

I know that when the pain and the waiting are here, the rising is on its way. I hope the pain will pass soon, but I'll wait it out because I've tested pain enough to trust it. And because who I will become tomorrow is so unforeseeable and specific that I'll need every bit of today's lessons to become her.

There is a life meant for you that is truer than the one you're living. But in order to have it, you will have to forge it yourself. You will have to create on the outside what you are imagining on the inside. Only you can bring it forth. And it will cost you everything.

This is what I know. Parents love their children. I have met no exceptions. Love is a river, and there are times when impediments stop the flow of love. Mental illness, addiction, shame, narcissism, fear passed down by religious and cultural institutions — these are boulders that interrupt love's flow.

I looked at all of those contradictory opinions and thought: If there is, in fact, an objective right or wrong way to handle this, why do all of these people have such different ideas about what a person should do? I had an epiphany: It must be that should and shouldn't, right and wrong, good and bad — they're not wild. They're not real. They're just culturally constructed, artificial, ever-changing cages created to maintain institutions. It struck me that in every family, culture, or religion, ideas of right and wrong are the hot cattle prods, the barking sheepdogs that keep the masses in the herd. They are the bars that keep us caged.

Recently, my friend Erika called my cell phone. I will never understand why people insist upon calling my cell phone. It's such an aggressive action to take: calling someone. Each time my phone rings, I have a heart attack like my pocket's on fire and a tiny siren is going off. I'd also like to take this opportunity to address texting. Texting = Better Than Calling. Unless. Unless you are one of those people who doles out texts like IOUs. Unless you believe that whenever you feel like it, you can just poke at me, ping me, jump into my day like Hiiiiii and feel so entitled to a response that the next time I see you, you will arrange your face in an injured manner and say quietly, "Hey. You doing okay? I just never heard back…" At this moment, I have 183 unread texts. Texts are not the boss of me, and neither is anybody who texts me. I have decided, once and for all, that just because someone texts me does not obligate me to respond. If I believed differently, I'd walk around all day feeling anxious and indebted, responding instead of creating. Now that we've established why I have no friends, let's return to Erika.

A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter

Second: I can use pain to become. I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. Whether I like it or not, pain is the fuel of revolution. Everything I need to become the woman I'm meant to be next is inside my feelings of now. Life is alchemy, and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.

Rebellion is as much of a cage as obedience is. They both mean living in reaction to someone else's way instead of forging your own.

What if we used our mothering love less like a laser, burning holes into the children assigned to us, and more like the sun, making sure all kids are warm?

When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself.

I am a human being, meant to be in perpetual becoming. My goal is not to remain the same but to live in such a way that each day, year, moment, relationship, conversation , and crisis is the material I use to become a truer, more beautiful version of myself.

think of the words of Dr. Maya Angelou: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." Doing our best now is an active thing, and so is knowing better. We don't show up and then wait to magically know better. We show up and then, when we are corrected, we keep working. We listen hard so we can know better next time. We seek out teachers so we can know better next time. We let burn our ideas about how good and well-meaning we are so we can become better next time. Learning to know better is a commitment. We will only know better if we continue unbecoming.