Julia Spiro > Quotes

“It’s that I’m always nervous I’m going to let them down in person. That I’m going to be a disappointing departure from the person they’ve gotten to know online.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“What a wild idea, I realize, that it might have been possible for me to go through life simply appreciating what my body could do, not just how it looked.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“But sometimes I wondered, when I got older, if she had lost some of who she was in her role as a mother.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Now I’m ready to reengage with Ben, ready for whatever comes next. I’ve managed to be the girl who can eat three slices of pizza and still have a flat stomach when she undresses half an hour later. Now, I’m the unicorn.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Even now, the only thing she felt, thinking about that night, was shame. Acknowledging the crime would only worsen that.”
― Julia Spiro, Someone Else's Secret

“The ones who pretend to be inclusive and supportive of body equality but are actually fatphobic,”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Quickly, I grew numb to the content of these “real” posts, and they became weekly tasks I checked off my list. My anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia—these issues morphed into talking points that I used to fill my social media feed and make myself more relatable. Somewhere along the way, I stopped acknowledging to myself that these issues were still real to me, that they still chipped away at my happiness and sense of self.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Conversations were the thing that gave her the most anxiety.”
― Julia Spiro, Someone Else's Secret

“And in the previous months, my late-blooming prepubescent body had transformed from what a male classmate had described as “cardboard”—flat from every angle—to having boobs, a butt, hips, and a belly. The changes made me feel like a visitor in my own skin. My bones and flesh felt unfamiliar to me, at a time when I was already feeling rudderless and disoriented.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“perfect my messy bun,”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“You okay?” Rhoda asks. I nod. I don’t have the energy to open my mouth and tell them the truth: that I’m not okay, that my entire life has imploded within twenty-four hours, and that I’m on the verge of a total and complete meltdown. I don’t need to tell them, anyway. They know.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“She’s helped me to realize that my bulimia was never really about food. It was about my mom, about connecting with her, holding on to her through it. It was about my sense of self. It was realizing that in order to feel like I was in control of my own life, I had to relinquish control of many other things. Food was just how all those things manifested themselves. Once I was able to realize that, I could appreciate food in a new way.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“though the truth is that no collagen powder will make their skin look ten years younger.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Their compassion makes me want to curl into a ball. All the stuff I preach about women supporting other women—this is it. This is real. This is what it looks like when it actually happens”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Except, for her, the movement was just a reminder that she was one of the women choosing to stay silent. She”
― Julia Spiro, Someone Else's Secret

“I’m just telling them what I do. Or what I want them to think I do.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“I realize, as I say it, how foreign it is to me to feel actual support from other women without the veil of competition, or without the instinct to distrust it. But it feels nice.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“stuff my phone into my back pocket and decide that it’s time I took accountability for myself, for once. It’s not really that I owe him an explanation. It’s that I actually want to give him one.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“I still hate it so much, and yet the only comfort I can find—when my longing for her is so profound and painful that my entire body feels like one big bruise—is on the cold tile of the bathroom floor.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“She was hoping that, instead, a great, global natural disaster would rocket humanity into panic, and her small problems would just disappear in the chaos.”
― Julia Spiro, Someone Else's Secret

“The problem with bulimia is that once you know how to do it, once you know how easy it is to do it, it’s basically impossible not to do it whenever you’re tempted. How do you ever move on from that?”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“I feel so empty in every way—empty of tears, food, emotion—that there’s nothing left to do but carry on. I need to make an endorsement post and a few stories, at least, so that I can project the illusion of normalcy.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“I hate when influencers get so consumed with their sponsorships that all their posts are paid and nothing is real. Maintaining my authenticity is part of my brand. The key is finding a way to manufacture the “authentic” posts so that they feel completely real, even if they’re just as premeditated and edited as a sponsored post.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Within seconds, I have dozens of likes and thousands of views of my story. Good, I think. I might have ruined my personal life last night, but not my professional one.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“guess it just feels so indulgent to admit that I need time just for myself. That’s just such a greedy thing to say. My mother didn’t think about self-care. It’s a bullshit thing that our society has just made up so people buy stuff or have something to talk about on social media.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“But it seemed to her that all the adults in her life kept everything trapped inside, even the things that everyone else knew to be true.”
― Julia Spiro, Someone Else's Secret

“TheGratefulAvocado has somehow become a facade, a version of me that I know doesn’t exist,”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Honestly, I kind of can,” Stephanie says. “Which is what scares me. I mean, I think it’s totally possible to live your life just sort of . . . coasting. Telling yourself what you need to tell yourself to get by. I think I could live like that forever. But I don’t want to. And I don’t intend to.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“And you’re right. The self-care culture has gotten out of control. Now people are told they need to buy certain things or look a certain way, live a certain way, to be happy, to be healthy.” I pause. “And it’s totally backfired, spiraled into something totally antithetical to self-care, actually. Now women are just competing with other women on social media. We present this bullshit, fake image of perfection to the world, but it’s totally unattainable. And it’s dangerous”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“I feel hollow, sad, and alone, but too empty to cry.”
― Julia Spiro, Full