Tag Archives: words of wisdom

01.02.14
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New Year Words of Wisdom

“Each New Year, we have before us a brand new book containing 365 blank pages. Let us fill them with all the forgotten things from last year—the words we forgot to say, the love we forgot to show, and the charity we forgot to offer.”
― Peggy Toney Horton

 

So inspiring, and a commitment I need to make this year.

10.22.13
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Words of Love

I’m a big fan of quotes.  “Words of Wisdom” as they are called.  But that’s not what this post is about.  It’s about words of love–self-love to be exact.  Isn’t it funny how a perfect stranger, living a completely different life that will never cross with mine, can write something so compelling/inspiring/accurate/concise that perfectly sums up everything I feel and want and need?

Without getting all spiritual-y, it’s kind of a testament to the interrelatedness of us all, yeah?

So I was not at all surprised when Hannah Brencher posted this beautiful essay, “I’m not gonna tell you that you’re beautiful” and I found so many sections spoke to me.  Here are just the highlights:

I’m just going to tell you that you’re kind of strange. You’re kind of quirky in the sense that no one ever fully understands the person that you are so you carry it like a secret between your smirked lips. Yes, you’ve been waiting for a moment to prove people wrong. I cannot wait to see that day.

Struggles are going to make you a fighter. Where I come from, we kiss the dirty ground for struggles. They are going to make your story that much resilient. You’re not going to survive them, you are going to absolutely obliterate them.

I’m not gonna tell you you’re dainty, and fragile, and a flower in the field. I’m not gonna turn you into a delicate line of poetry when you were born with so much feist & zeal & madness inside of you. How dare the world not tell you, right from the start, that you are some kind of warrior.

Darling, you’re adequate. While dancing. While speaking. While ugly crying. While spitting game. While struggling. While fighting. While laughing like a lunatic. While singing Taylor Swift at the top of your lungs. While slamming the door and walking away.  In every little crook of you stands some sort of adequacy that the world would do anything to keep you unconvinced of.

I’m not gonna let you be the world’s largest living & breathing apology. I’m not gonna let you say “sorry” any longer– as if “sorry” were your second language– for things no human should ever have to apologize for. Say sorry when you’ve hurt someone. Say sorry when you’ve really misplaced your words and actions. But stop saying sorry for standing there and showing up to life everyday. You’re not an apology letter, you’re a thank-you note just waiting to happen.

 

The whole essay is wonderful, and a much, much needed reminder that sadly, there are a lot of people out there who wish to tear us down, if for no other reason than they have to, to make themselves feel bigger.  That’s fine; I can accept others’ need to find “self”confidence and “self” worth making others feel small and insignificant (if you’ve got nowhere else to look for it, then so be it).  I just don’t have to sit around and enable them with my life, my experiences, my worth.