Glennon Doyle Quotes

We can make our own normal. We can throw out all the rules and write our own. We can build our lives from the inside out. We can stop asking what the world wants from us and instead ask ourselves what we want for our world. We can stop looking at what's in front of us long enough to discover what's inside us. We can remember and unleash the life-changing, relationship-changing, world-changing power of our own imagination. It might take us a lifetime. Luckily, a lifetime is exactly how long we have.

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

Each of us was born to bring forth something that has never existed: a way of being, a family, an idea, art, a community — something brand-new. We are here to fully introduce ourselves, to impose ourselves and ideas and thoughts and dreams onto the world, leaving it changed forever by who we are and what we bring forth from our depths. So we cannot contort ourselves to fit into the visible order. We must unleash ourselves and watch the world reorder itself in front of our eyes.

I understand now that no one else in the world knows what I should do. The experts don't know, the ministers, the therapists, the magazines, the authors, my parents, my friends, they don't know. Not even the folks who love me the most. Because no one has ever lived or will live this life I am attempting to live. Every life is an unprecendented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they've never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers.

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.

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.

while rock bottom feels like the end — it's always the beginning of something. I knew that this was the moment I'd either relapse with a couple shots of self-pity and resignation, or I'd double down on my racial sobriety and carry on. I told myself: Breathe. Don't panic and flee. Sink. Feel it all. Be Still. Imagine. Let it burn.

Every life is an unprecedented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they've never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers.

Discontent is the nagging of the imagination. Discontent is evidence that your imagination has not given up on you. It is still pressing, swelling, trying to get your attention by whispering: "Not this."

It takes special bravery to honor yourself when the crowd is pressuring you not to. It's easier just to give in. You didn't give in to the crowd today. You stood strong in what you felt and knew. To me, that's the greatest bravery. That's true confidence, which means loyalty to self.

It is a blessing to know a free woman. Sometimes she will stop by and hold up a mirror for you. She will help you remember who you are.

Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.

What if parenting became less about telling our children who they should be and more about asking them again and again forever who they already are? Then, when they tell us, we would celebrate instead of concede. It's not: I love you no matter which of my expectations you meet or don't meet. It's: My only expectation is that you become yourself. The more deeply I know you, the more beautiful you become to me.

The boys looked inside themselves. The girls looked outside themselves. We forgot how to know when we learned how to please. This is why we live hungry.

What if we revised our memo? What if we decided that successful parenting includes working to make sure that all kids have enough, not just that the particular kids assigned to us have everything? 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?