The Ache is not a flaw. The Ache is our meeting place. It's the clubhouse of the brave. All the lovers are there. It is where you go alone to meet th… - Glennon Doyle

Progress is just perpetually undoing our no longer true enough systems in order to create new ones that more closely fit people as they really are. People aren't changing, after all. It's just that for the first time there's enough freedom for people to stop changing who they are. Progress is the acknowledgment of what is and what has always been. Progress is always a returning.

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.

I looked hard at my faith, my friendships, my work, my sexuality, my entire life and asked: How much of this was my idea? Do I truly want any of this, or is this what I was conditioned to want? Which of my beliefs are of my own creation and which were programmed into me? How much of who I've become is inherent, and how much was just inherited? How much of the way I look and speak and behave is just how other people have trained me to look and speak and behave? How many of the things I've spent my life chasing are just dirty pink bunnies? Who was I before I became who the world told me to be?