Glennon Doyle Quotes

God. A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter. When she finally understands that she is creating something different from what her parents created. When she begins to build her island not to their specifications but to hers. When she finally understands that it is not her duty to convince everyone on her island to accept and respect her and her children. It is her duty to allow onto her island only those who already do and who will walk across the drawbridge as the beloved, respectful guests they are.

When I see a joyful, confident woman moving through the world with swagger, I'm going to forgive myself for my first reaction because it's not my fault, it's just my conditioning. First reaction: Who the hell does she think she is? Second reaction: She knows she's a goddamn cheetah. Halle-fucking-lujah.

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."

The culture depends on the sensitivity of a few, because nothing can be healed if it's not sensed first.

In the past eighteen years, I have learned two things about pain. First: I can feel everything and survive. What I thought would kill me, didn't. Every time I said to myself: I can't take this anymore — I was wrong. The truth was that I could and did take it all — and I kept surviving. Surviving again and again made me less afraid of myself, of other people, of life. I learned that I'd never be free from pain but I could be free from the fear of pain, and that was enough. I finally stopped avoiding fires long enough to let myself burn, and what I learned was that I am like that burning bush: The fire of pain won't consume me. I can burn and burn and live. I can live on fire. I am fireproof. 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.

Be careful with the stories you tell about yourself

We can do hard things, like be alive and love deep and lose it all, because we do these hard things alongside everyone who has ever walked the Earth with her eyes, arms, and heart wide open.

People have different ideas about what's brave. You did the brave thing, because the brave thing is doing what your Knowing tells you to do. You don't ask others what's brave, you feel and know what's brave. What you know to do might be the opposite of what others are telling you to do. It takes special bravery to honor yourself when the crowd is pressuring you not to. [...]

Sometimes being brave requires letting the crowd think you're a coward. Sometimes being brave means letting everyone down but yourself.

As I climbed out of the tub and shook my hair dry, I told myself: Maybe in a different life. Isn't that interesting? As if I had more than one.

I really, really think the secret to being loved is to love. And the secret to being interesting is to be interested. And the secret to having a friend is being a friend.... Be brave. Like somebody.

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.

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.

I am not a good friend. I have never been capable of or willing to commit to the maintenance that the rules of friendship dictate. I cannot rmember bithdays. I do not want to meet for coffee. I will not host the baby shower. I won't text back because it's an eternal game of Ping-Pong, the texting. It never ends. I inevitably disappoint friends, so after enough of that, I decided I would stop trying. I don't want to live in constant debt. This is okay with me.

All of the beliefs that anger delivers come with a return label.

This way of life requires living in integrity: ensuring that my inner self and outer self are integrated. Integrity means having only one self. Dividing into two selves — the shown self and the hidden self — that is brokenness, so I do whatever it takes to stay whole. I do not adjust myself to please the world. I am myself wherever I am, and I let the world adjust.