Steph McGlenchy > Steph's Quotes

“Last night I lost the world, and gained the universe.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“The day I understood everything, was the day I stopped trying to figure everything out. The day I knew peace was the day I let everything go.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“I demolish my bridges behind me...then there is no choice but to move forward”
― Fridtjof Nansen

“I realise there's something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they're experts at letting things go.”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

“Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, "What else could this mean?”
― Shannon L. Alder

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The truth was, he now belonged only to my past, and it was time I begin to accept it, as much as it hurt to do so.”
― Tammara Webber, Easy

“The greatest step towards a life of simplicity is to learn to let go.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“Thank God I found the GOOD in goodbye”
― Beyonce Knowles

“Love is never supposed to hurt. Love is supposed to heal, to be your haven from misery, to make living fucking worthwhile.”
― Mia Asher, Arsen: A Broken Love Story

“Closing The Cycle

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.”
― Paulo Coelho

“Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Sometimes letting go is simply changing the labels you place on an event. Looking at the same event with fresh eyes.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“The most difficult aspect of moving on is accepting that the other person already did.”
― Faraaz Kazi

“When someone you love says goodbye you can stare long and hard at the door they closed and forget to see all the doors God has open in front of you.”
― Shannon Alder

“You will evolve past certain people. Let yourself.”
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman–Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass: Embracing Singleness with Confidence

“Letting him go

There is a particular kind of suffering to be experienced when you love something greater than yourself. A tender sacrifice. Like the pained silence felt in the lost song of a mermaid; or the bent and broken feet of a dancing ballerina. It is in every considered step I am taking in the opposite direction of you.”
― Lang Leav

“Know that everything is in perfect order whether you understand it or not.”
― Valery Satterwhite

“It is by giving the freedom to the other, that is by letting go, we gain our own freedom back.”
― Aleksandra Ninkovic

“The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Recognizing that people's reactions don't belong to you is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you've created, terrific. If people ignore what you've created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you've created, don't sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you've created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest - as politely as you possibly can - that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes, too.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“It starts by forgetting about perfect. We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: It’s a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death. The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: “So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun... The most evil trick about perfectionism, though, is that it disguises itself as a virtue.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“You don’t need to conduct autopsies on your disasters.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“failure has a function. It asks you whether you really want to go on making things.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“Because often what keeps you from creative living is your self-absorption (your self-doubt, your self-disgust, your self-judgment, your crushing sense of self-protection).”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“You do not need anybody’s permission to live a creative life.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“Hemingway never said any of this.
It's all AI-generated bullshit.



The hardest lesson I’ve had to learn as an adult is the relentless need to keep going, no matter how shattered I feel inside."

This truth is both raw and universal. Life doesn’t pause when our hearts are heavy, our minds are fractured, or our spirits feel like they’re unraveling. It keeps moving—unrelenting, unapologetic—demanding that we move with it. There’s no time to stop, no pause for repair, no moment of stillness where we can gently piece ourselves back together. The world doesn’t wait, even when we need it to.

What makes this even harder is that no one really prepares us for it. As children, we grow up on a steady diet of stories filled with happy endings, tales of redemption and triumph where everything always falls into place. But adulthood strips away those comforting narratives. Instead, it reveals a harsh truth: survival isn’t glamorous or inspiring most of the time. It’s wearing a mask of strength when you’re falling apart inside. It’s showing up when all you want is to retreat. It’s choosing to move forward, step by painful step, when your heart begs for rest.

And yet, we endure. That’s the miracle of being human—we endure. Somewhere in the depths of our pain, we find reserves of strength we didn’t know we possessed. We learn to hold space for ourselves, to be the comfort we crave, to whisper words of hope when no one else does. Over time, we realize that resilience isn’t loud or grandiose; it’s a quiet defiance, a refusal to let life’s weight crush us entirely.

Yes, it’s messy. Yes, it’s exhausting. And yes, there are days when it feels almost impossible to take another step. But even then, we move forward. Each tiny step is proof of our resilience, a reminder that even in our darkest moments, we’re still fighting, still refusing to give up. That fight—that courage—is the quiet miracle of survival.”
― Ernest Hemingway