Glennon Doyle Quotes

I knew what she'd tell me. She'd say, "Something's off about my life. I feel restless and frustrated. I have this hunch that everything was supposed to be more beautiful than this. I imagine fenceless, wide-open savannas. I want to run and hunt and kill. I want to sleep under an ink-black, silent sky filled with stars. It's all so real I can taste it." Then she'd look back at the cage, the only home she's ever known. She'd look at the smiling zookeepers, the bored spectators, and her panting, bouncing, begging best friend, the Lab. She'd sigh and say, "I should be grateful. I have a good enough life here. It's crazy to long for what doesn't even exist." I'd say: Tabitha. You are not crazy. You are a goddamn cheetah.

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. 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 ever live this life I am attempting to live, with my gifts and challenges and past and people. 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.

Easy" buttons are the things that appear in front of us that we want to reach for because they temporarily take us out of our pain and stress. They do not work in the long run, because what they actually do is help us abandon ourselves. "Easy" buttons take us to fake heaven. Fake heaven always turns out to be hell. You know you've hit an "easy" button when, afterward, you feel more lost in the woods than you did before you hit it. It has taken me forty years to decide that when I feel bad, I want to do something that makes me feel better instead of worse.
I keep a handwritten poster in my office titled "Easy Buttons and Reset Buttons."
On the left are all the things I do to abandon myself.
On the right are my reset buttons, the things I can do to make staying with myself a little more possible.

Decades after that day in the therapist's office, Donald Trump was elected president. A friend called me and said, "This is the apocalypse. This is the end of our country as we know it." I said, "I hope so. Apocalypse means uncovering. Gotta uncover before you can recover." She said, "Oh, God, not more recovery talk. Not now." "No, listen — this feels to me like we've hit rock bottom! Maybe that means we're finally ready for the steps. Maybe we'll admit that our country has become unmanageable. Maybe we'll take a moral inventory and face our open family secret: that this nation — founded upon 'liberty and justice for all' — was built while murdering, enslaving, raping, and subjugating millions. Maybe we'll admit that liberty and justice for all has always meant liberty for white straight wealthy men. Then maybe we'll gather the entire family at the table — the women and the gay and black and brown folks and those in power — so that we can begin the long, hard work of making amends. I've seen this process heal people and families. Maybe our nation can heal this way, too.

Maybe Eve was never meant to be our warning. Maybe she was meant to be our model. Own your wanting. Eat the apple. Let it burn.

I do not adjust myself to please the world. I am myself wherever I am, and I let the world adjust.

Mercy and empathy are great threats to an unjust society.

The building of the true and beautiful means the destruction of the good enough.

I was wild until I was tamed by shame. Until I started hiding and numbing my feelings for fear of being too much. Until I started deferring to others' advice instead of trusting my own intuition. Until I became convinced that my imagination was ridiculous and my desires were selfish. Until I surrendered myself to the cages of others' expectations, cultural mandates, and institutional allegiances. Until I buried who I was in order to become what I should be. I lost myself when I learned how to please.

If you want to get jaded and numb, watch the news. If you want to stay human, read letters. When trying to understand humanity, seek out firsthand accounts.

The miracle of grace is that you can give what you have never gotten.

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.

Like Jesus, who walked straight toward his own crucifixion. First the pain, then the waiting, then the rising. All of our suffering comes when we try to get to our resurrection without allowing ourselves to be crucified first. There is no glory except straight through your story. Pain is not tragic. Pain is magic. Suffering is tragic. Suffering is what happens when we avoid pain and consequently miss our becoming. That is what I can and must avoid: missing my own evolution because I am too afraid to surrender to the process. Having such little faith in myself that I numb or hide or consume my way out of my fiery feelings again and again. So my goal is to stop abandoning myself — and stay. To trust that I'm strong enough to handle the pain that is necessary to the process of becoming. Because what scares me a hell of a lot more than pain is living my entire life and missing my becoming. What scares me more than feeling it all is missing it all. These days, when pain comes, there are two of me. There is the me that is miserable and afraid, and there is the me that is curious and excited. That second me is not a masochist, she's wise. She remembers. She remembers that even though I can't know what will come next in my life, I always know

Here's the rub: Destruction is essential to construction. If we want to build the new, we must be willing to let the old burn. We must be committed to holding on to nothing but the truth.

You are a human being, and your birthright is to remain fully human. So you get to be everything: loud quiet bold smart careful impulsive creative joyful big angry curious ravenous ambitious. You are allowed to take up space on this earth with your feelings, your ideas, your body. You do not need to shrink. You do not need to hide any part of yourself, ever.