Yan Nguyen

“Phrases like “Get over it!” and “It’s all in your head” are rooted in ableism. They are body terrorism against non-normative brains. Let’s stop telling people to “get over it” and start asking, “How can I help you heal?”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“A particularly strategic maneuver is to decide that if we don’t understand something it must be wrong. After all, wrong is simpler than not knowing. Wrong means I am not stupid or failing. See all that sneaky, slimy projection happening there? Projection shields us from personal responsibility. It obscures our shame and confusion and places the onus for reconciling it on the body of someone else. We don’t have to work to understand something when it is someone else’s “fault.” We don’t have to undo the shame-based beliefs we were brought up with. We don’t have to question our parents, friends, churches, synagogues, mosques, government, media. We don’t have to challenge or be challenged.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Saying I’m fat is (and should be) the same as saying my shoes are black, the clouds are fluffy, and Bob Saget is tall. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is. The only negativity that this word carries is that which has been socially constructed around it.… We don’t need to stop using the word fat, we need to stop the hatred that our world connects with the word fat.2”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Our disconnection, trauma, lack of resources, lack of compassion, fear, greed, and ego are the sources of our contributions to human suffering, not our bodies. We can accept humans and their bodies without understanding “why” they love, think, move, or look the way they do. Contrary to common opinion, freeing ourselves from the need to understand everything can bring about a tremendous amount of peace.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love