Emily Ray

“But even as I fought to make myself smaller, my self would fight back. The diets would not stick, the laughter would not quiet, the opinions would not hide, the anger would not die. Every attempt I made to be less of myself would fail, and I would come back bigger than ever—in every way.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“If the self can only understand that ‘it was already dying, already dead’, then it can crash to the bottom with equanimity; if it can also understand that everything around it is fleeting and insubstantial – a speck of dust in the cosmos, to be blown away in a millisecond – it can quietly let go of the world. It won’t hurt much.”
― Andreas Malm, How to Blow Up a Pipeline

“Rage. It’s like there’s a pilot light always burning in my center. It takes almost nothing for the flames to shoot up.”
― Lisa Unger, The Doll's House

“Forgive yourself for outgrowing certain people in your life. Forgive yourself for all of those moments you had to protect your energy, for all of those moments you had to make the hard decision to choose yourself, because by staying, and trying to fight harder, and give more, and be more, and fix and fix and save and save, you were only ever depleting yourself to the point of exhaustion. Forgive yourself for all of the times you tore up pieces of your own heart in order to mend another human being, hoping that it would heal them and nourish them and make them better or happier. Forgive yourself for wanting to save the people you loved.”
― Bianca Sparacino, A Gentle Reminder