Spencer Mesh > Spencer's Quotes

“The thing that gets me thinking and questioning most deeply is a leader who warns me not to think or question.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“Perhaps imagination is not where we go to escape reality but where we go to remember it.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“The truest, most beautiful life never promises to be an easy one. We need to let go of the lie that it's supposed to be.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“WE CAN DO HARD THINGS.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“You are here to decide if your life, relationships and world are true and beautiful enough for you. And if they are not and you dare to admit they are not, you must decide if you have the guts, the right - perhaps even the duty - to burn to the ground that which is not true and beautiful enough and get started building what is.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“Blessed are those brave enough to make things awkward, for they wake us up and move us forward.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“Tish is sensitive, and that is her superpower. The opposite of sensitive is not brave. It’s not brave to refuse to pay attention, to refuse to notice, to refuse to feel and know and imagine. The opposite of sensitive is insensitive, and that’s no badge of honor.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“I will not stay, not ever again - in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“Because once we feel, know, and dare to imagine more for ourselves, we cannot unfeel, unknow, or unimagine. There is no going back.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“What is better: uncomfortable truth or comfortable lies? Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.
—Liz Gilbert”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“Living in a female body, a Black body, an aging body, a fat body, a body with mental illness is to awaken daily to a planet that expects a certain set of apologies to already live on our tongues. There is a level of “not enough” or “too much” sewn into these strands of difference.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Systems do not maintain themselves; even our lack of intervention is an act of maintenance. Every structure in every society is upheld by the active and passive assistance of other human beings.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“When our personal value is dependent on the lesser value of other bodies, radical self-love is unachievable.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Radical self-love demands that we see ourselves and others in the fullness of our complexities and intersections and that we work to create space for those intersections.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“When we decide that people’s bodies are wrong because we don’t understand them, we are trying to avoid the discomfort of divesting from an entire body-shame system.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“there is no standard of health that is achievable for all bodies. Our belief that there should be anchors the systemic oppression of ableism and reinforces the notion that people with illnesses and disabilities have defective bodies rather than different bodies.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Racism, sexism, ableism, homo- and transphobia, ageism, fatphobia are algorithms created by humans’ struggle to make peace with the body. A radical self-love world is a world free from the systems of oppression that make it difficult and sometimes deadly to live in our bodies.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Radical self-love summons us to be our most expansive selves, knowing that the more unflinchingly powerful we allow ourselves to be, the more unflinchingly powerful others feel capable of being. Our unapologetic embrace of our bodies gives others permission to unapologetically embrace theirs.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Dismantling oppression and our role in it demands that we explore where we have been complicit in the system of body terrorism while employing the same compassion we needed to explore our complicity in our internalized body shame.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Unlearning is challenging. Do not expect neat, tidy resolutions, or assume that we will instantly fix the world’s ills in a single dialogue. We can, however, get closer to those goals if we are willing to be uncomfortable.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“A particularly strategic maneuver is to decide that if we don’t understand something it must be wrong. After all, wrong is simpler than not knowing. Wrong means I am not stupid or failing. See all that sneaky, slimy projection happening there? Projection shields us from personal responsibility. It obscures our shame and confusion and places the onus for reconciling it on the body of someone else. We don’t have to work to understand something when it is someone else’s “fault.” We don’t have to undo the shame-based beliefs we were brought up with. We don’t have to question our parents, friends, churches, synagogues, mosques, government, media. We don’t have to challenge or be challenged.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“The argument that people “chose” to be this way or the other is at its core an argument about difference and our inability to understand and make peace with difference. The notion of choice is a convenient scapegoat for our bias and bigotries.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Guess what? Your brain is part of your body! Why am I yelling this? Because too often we treat our brain as though it’s a separate operating system tucked away in a room we call the skull. Our tendency to divorce our brains from our bodies is one of the sneaky ways in which body shame thrives. Isolating our brains gives us permission to treat them differently. Depression, bipolar disorder, and other examples of neurodivergence7 are stigmatized because we are unwilling to extend the same care and treatment to our brains that we afford our bodies. If I broke my arm and never went to a see a doctor, not only would I be in extreme pain but the people in my life would be incensed by such a reckless choice. Yet we make statements like “It’s all in your head” all the time, minimizing the experiences of our brains and neglecting their care.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Making peace with your body is your mighty act of revolution. It is your contribution to a changed planet where we might all live unapologetically in the bodies we have.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Like many people, he felt that his intention should have absolved him from his impact.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“The most powerful antidote to a world of body terrorism is a world of compassion. Giving yourself the gift of grace is an act of revolution!”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Terrorism is defined as “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.”39 It takes no more than a brief review of the historic and present-day examples of media manipulation and legislative oppression to acknowledge that we are indeed being coerced into body shame for both economic and political reasons.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Natasha, your body is not an apology. It is not something you give to someone to say, ‘Sorry for my disability.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Our inherent sense of radical self-love doesn’t speak to us with cruelty or viciousness. Radical self-love does not malign our gender, sexuality, race, disability, weight, age, acne, scars, illnesses. A world of body terrorism that impugns us because of our identities is the only thing that would dare speak to us with such malice. Just”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love