Sarah Stevens

“The greatest gift anyone could give anyone is for the other to feel worthy, adored and more than enough for all that they are.
This is a gentle reminder that the people you surround yourself with in every direction should feel both uplifting and safe to your mind and heart.
Not confusing, not draining, not controlling, not vague, not calculating, not unreliable, not cold, not dismissive, and not manipulative.
Don’t mess around with the energy you take into your body and being, work wise, friendship wise, and relationship wise.
Life is too short and delicate for these damaging things.
It’s really that simple.”
― Victoria Erickson

“Don't think you haven't lived long enough to have a story to tell.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“And I walked across the room past all that was missing, through the door, and into the light that shone like a sweet wide smile over all that was actually there.”
― Sarah Weeks, So B. It

“While a life like Frederick Douglas’s is remarkable, we must remember that not every person who lived through slavery was like Douglas. Most did not learn to read or write. Most did not engage in hand-to-hand combat with white slave brakers. Most did not live close enough to free states in the North to have any hope of escape. No one, enslaved or otherwise, was like Douglas. There were other brilliant, exceptional people who lived under slavery, and many resisted the institution in innumerable ways, but our country’s teachings about slavery, painfully limited, often focus singularly on heroic slave narratives, at the expense of millions of men and women whose stories might be less sensational but are no less worthy of being told.

“I thought of my primary and secondary education. I remembered feeling crippling guilt as I silently wondered why every enslaved person couldn’t simply escape like Douglas, Tubman, and Jacobs had. I found myself angered by the stories of those who did not escape. Had they not tried hard enough? Didn’t they care enough to do something? Did they choose to remain enslaved? This, I now realize, is part of the insidiousness of white supremacy. It illuminates the exceptional in order to implicitly blame those who cannot, despite the most brutal circumstances, attain super-human heights. It does this instead of blaming the system, the people who built it, and the people who maintained it.”
― Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America