Julia Reck

“I used to joke I'd escaped the curse of the male gaze, because so many men have to physically look up to meet my eyes. But the male gaze is a gods-eye view. Which is to say: omni-present, and internalized. There's still a man in the mirror, watching me look at myself.”
― Meg Howrey, They're Going to Love You

“This is my legacy. I come from people who are in the back of the photo. This is my inheritance: to know the precise distance between oneself, and greatness.”
― Meg Howrey, They're Going to Love You

“But by then, I've discovered the pleasures of solitude, and acquired the habit of loneliness.”
― Meg Howrey, They're Going to Love You

“what happens if joy is not separate from pain? What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? Or even more to the point, what if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things? What if joy, instead of refuge or relief from heartbreak, is what effloresces from us as we help each other carry our heartbreaks?”
― Ross Gay, Inciting Joy: Essays