Jenn Pickens

“The planet is a big, daunting place. It's easy to feel at the whim of the universe. We've been convinced we are ineffectual at exacting any real change against our social systems and structures so instead, we land the guilt and blame squarely on the shoulders of the most accessible party, ourselves. This burden has kept us immobile in our own lives and oblivious to our impact in the world. The weight of the shame has kept us small and strapped in the belief that our bodies and our lives are mistakes. What an exhausting and disheartening way to live.”
― 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

“In moments of insecurity and crisis, shoulds and oughts don’t really help; they just increase the shame, guilt, pressure, and likelihood of backsliding. It’s the deep yeses that carry us through. It’s that deeper something we are strongly for that allows us to wait it out. It’s someone in whom we absolutely believe and to whom we commit. In plain language, love wins out over guilt any day. It is sad that we settle for the short-run effectiveness of shaming people instead of the long-term life benefits of true transformation.”
― Richard Rohr, The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder

“We 'die' in the course of our lives many times, through failure of nerve or failing to live in some other sense; yet we get another chance to make our lives good.”
― Shakespeare