Glennon Doyle Melton Quotes

“Depression and anxiety are not feelings. Feelings return me to myself. Depression and anxiety are body snatchers that suck me out of myself so that I appear to be there but I’m really gone. Other people can still see me, but no one can feel me anymore—including me. For me, the tragedy of mental illness is not that I’m sad but that I’m not anything. Mental illness makes me miss my own life.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“I explain that now, when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, For the same reason I laugh so often—because I’m paying attention.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

“Friend, I am sober today. Thank God Almighty, I’m sober today. I’m here, friend. Yesterday my son turned ten, which means that I haven’t had a drink for ten years and eight months. Lots of beautiful and horrible things have happened to me during the past ten years and eight months, and I have handled my business day in and day out without booze. GOD, I ROCK.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

“I was filled with electric thunder, simmering water, fiery red and gold, but all I had to do was smile and nod and the world would take me for easy breezy blue. Sometimes I wondered if I wasn’t the only one using her skin to contain herself. Maybe we are all fire wrapped in skin, trying to look cool.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Untamed

“I guess women have to almost die before we give ourselves permission to live how we want.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton

“Depression takes all my vibrant colors and bashes them together until I am gray, gray, gray.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Untamed

“We find out early that telling the whole truth makes people uncomfortable and is certainly not ladylike or likely to make us popular, so we learn to lie sweetly so that we can be loved. And when we figure out this system, we are split in two: the public self, who says the right things in order to belong, and the secret self, who thinks other things.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

“I think that God puts people in our lives as gifts to us. The children in your class this year, they are some of God’s gifts to you. So please treat each one like a gift from God. Every single one.

Baby, if you see a child being left out, or hurt, or teased, part of your heart will hurt a little. Your daddy and I want you to trust that heartache. Your whole life, we want you to notice and trust your heartache. That heartache is called compassion, and it is God’s signal to you to do something. It is God saying, Chase! Wake up! One of my babies is hurting! Do something to help! Whenever you feel compassion, be thrilled! It means God is speaking to you, and that is magic. It means he trusts you and needs you.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

“For some kids, the classroom setting is the place where their genius is hardest to see and their challenges are easiest to see. And since they spend so much time in the classroom, that’s a tough break for these little guys. But if we are patient and calm and we wear our perspectacles and we keep believing, we will eventually see the specific magic of each child.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

“Wherever you go, there you are.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

“Sometimes you have to leave to discover that you left everything you needed back home. Is our life back home perfect? Hell no. But I have finally learned that I am not going to be perfectly happy anywhere. If I live by the water, I will miss the suburbs. If I live in the mountains, I will miss the water. If I watch House Hunters International, I will miss Costa Rica. And I’ve never even been to Costa Rica.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

“That thing that happens to you in the shower, babe. It’s called thinking. It’s something folks did before Google. Thinking is like…it’s like googling your own brain.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Untamed

“Numbness keeps us from becoming.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Untamed

“Depression and anxiety are not feelings. Feelings return me to myself. Depression and anxiety are body snatchers that suck me out of myself so that I appear to be there but I’m really gone. Other people can still see me, but no one can feel me anymore—including me. For me, the tragedy of mental illness is not that I’m sad but that I’m not anything. Mental illness makes me miss my own life.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton