Meg Meeker > Quotes

“But love isn't just about feeling good. It's about doing what you don't want to do, over and over again, if it needs to be done, for the sake of someone else. Love is really about self-sacrifice.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“Real love is gritty. It sweats and waits, it causes you to hold your tongue when you want to scream obscenities in anger, and it causes many men to accomplish extraordinary feats.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“Dad, it’s not optional: your daughter needs you to be her hero.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“Every one of our sons leaves home at some point. They become men who can return to help us mothers in ways that no other human can. They can teach us how to live our lives better. If we hold on long enough, and love them always, they come back to us.”
― Meg Meeker Md, Strong Mothers, Strong Sons: Lessons Mothers Need to Raise Extraordinary Men

“The tricky part about discovering our giftedness is that it may be in an area that feels unexpected.”
― Meg Meeker, The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity

“You gently leaned over her to kiss her forehead and pulled the blankets around her shoulders. No father can adequately articulate the experience of watching his sleeping child—it must be lived. Now, imagine you are walking out of her room. Could you turn around and look at her and believe that the sum of her existence rests in a mass of cells? Certainly not. But this is exactly how a rank secularist is obliged to view his daughter. She is nothing more than a genetic product of his and her mother’s DNA. The puffing of air through her tiny chest keeps her alive. Your time with her is precious, meaningful, but purely a biological phenomenon. Her thoughts and feelings can be traced to neuronal firing in her brain. One day you will die and she will die and that will be that. Life began through the splitting and rejoining of DNA and when they stopped functioning, she did too.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“When you teach her always to think about other people, to put herself in their shoes, to know that everyone—her friends, neighbors, and sister and brother—is important, you’ll give her the gift of friendship and living to the fullest as a caring, social being. If you teach your daughter to be good rather than simply happy, she will become both. Teaching your daughter humility is a wonderful gift. And it can be taught only by example.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“At some point in his development, you can bet that every son will wage war against his mother. Some boys wage war at age four, some at fourteen. Some do it once, others ten times. No matter what age this happens at, or how often it happens, these wars are lonely and confusing, and every mother who goes through them—as every mother will—is convinced that she is losing her son, and often blames herself for it. If this is happening to you, if you have recently been declared the enemy, or feel that it’s only a matter of time (it is), hold on. There is hope ahead.”
― Meg Meeker Md, Strong Mothers, Strong Sons: Lessons Mothers Need to Raise Extraordinary Men

“Friends who love us know that motherhood is about transitioning--and adjusting, constantly, to those changes. We must become masters of change because that is what life demands of us.”
― Meg Meeker, The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity

“If every mother in the United States could wrap her mind around her true value as a woman and mother, her life would never be the same. We would wake up every morning excited for the day rather feeling as though we'd been hit by a truck during the night. We would talk differently to our kids, fret less about our husbands' annoying habits, and speak with greater tenderness and clarity. We would find more contentment in our relationships, let means remarks roll off our backs, and leave work feeling confident in the job we performed. And best of all - we wouldn't obsess about our weight (can you imagine?), physical fitness, or what kind of home we live in. We would live a kinda of home we live in. We would live free from superficial needs because we would know deep in our hearts what we need and more importantly, what we don't need. Each of us would live a life of extraordinary freedom.”
― Meg Meeker

“Humility, however, prevents bullying and being bullied. When your daughter recognizes that all humans have equal value and never esteems herself above another, she doesn’t worry about asserting her superiority or take seriously a bully’s taunts. She knows that our worth is not in what we do, what we have, or what we are capable of being, but in the fact that we are human.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“Either way, the anger will come out onto us because we are his safety net, and therefore his target. We are the ones who will never leave. We are the ones who can take the arrows because we love our sons when no one else will, and they know it. And we will always be there when they return, regardless of how volatile the wars have been. How blessed we are to be the mothers of sons.”
― Meg Meeker Md, Strong Mothers, Strong Sons: Lessons Mothers Need to Raise Extraordinary Men

“man can banter with his friends and colleagues about whether God exists. But a father looks at his daughter and knows.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“Instead of saying, “I love you because you’re so beautiful,” tell her that you love her because there is no one else in the world like her.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“More important than succeeding at work is succeeding with your family.”
― Meg Meeker, Boys Should Be Boys: 7 Secrets to Raising Healthy Sons

“She felt indispensable and made no apologies. She allowed herself to accept her importance and this is something many of us mothers refuse to do.”
― Meg Meeker, The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity

“When a father is involved in his kids’ day-to-day activities, they are more likely to confide in him and seek his emotional support.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“After more than twenty years of listening to daughters—and doling out antibiotics, anti-depressants, and stimulants to girls who have gone without a father’s love—I know just how important fathers are.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“Perhaps she was just having early pubertal “rebellion,” her mother and I concluded. (Be careful when you hear this term, because nine out of ten times, this isn’t normal. More is brewing beneath the surface of her behavior.)”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“Be calm, patient, and frank. Tell her that women in magazines aren’t the best role models, that people who judge everyone on their looks probably have terrible self-esteem issues. Tell her that what matters is not how thin someone is, but what her character is. And tell her what is great about her, what you like about her, what you hope for her.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“The only way you will alienate your daughter in the long term is by losing her respect, failing to lead, or failing to protect her. If you don’t provide for her needs, she will find someone else who will—and that’s when trouble starts. Don’t let that happen.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“True masculinity is the moral exercise of authority.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“Love her extraordinarily. This is the heart of great fathering. Chapter”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“At the beginning of her life, she will feel your love. At the end of her life, you will be on her mind. And what happens in between is up to you. Love her extraordinarily. This is the heart of great fathering.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“If you don’t give guidance to your daughter, she’ll come up with answers of her own—which means your authority will be replaced by someone else’s.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“We simply must accept that they are loaned to us for a time and then they are released into adulthood. When we believe this, we feel more joy and contentment in parenting them, we simplify our expectations of ourselves regarding parenting, and we experience a welcome levity in our relationships with them. Inward”
― Meg Meeker, The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity

“(Una advertencia para que su vida no se complique: no permita que su hija vea la tele o utilice el ordenador en su habitación. Trate de que la televisión se vea en plan familiar, cuando usted o su esposa están presentes y puedan decidir qué programas ver).”
― Meg Meeker, Padres fuertes, hijas felices

“People are valuable because they're human, not because of what they do.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“HPV?”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know

“When she’s in your company, your daughter tries harder to excel. When you teach her, she learns more rapidly. When you guide her, she gains confidence. If you fully understood just how profoundly you can influence your daughter’s life, you would be terrified, overwhelmed, or both. Boyfriends, brothers, even husbands can’t shape her character the way you do. You will influence her entire life because she gives you an authority she gives no other man.”
― Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know