Questions are like gifts – it’s the thought behind them that the receiver really feels. We have to know the receiver to give the right gift and to ask the right question. Generic gifts and questions are all right, but personal gifts and questions feel better.
We’re told that to be successful girls, we have to be small and quiet. Yet to be successful humans, we have to become big and have a voice. There’s an inherent contradiction.
To me, full-time mothering felt like way too much and yet not nearly enough. Lost in a landslide of diapers, birthday parties, and others’ needs, I ached to reestablish myself.
The hardest part of living without social media was remembering that my little life was enough, so I could just stay there and live it without asking for anyone else’s permission or validation. I realized that for me, posting is like asking the world, ‘Do you ‘like’ me?’
We are all trained by Disney to believe that the wedding is the finish line, but the wedding is just another starting line. In light of this fact, we should quit the huge, fancy, debt-inducing weddings.
Habits are learned. And children learn their habits by watching what we do, not by listening to what we say. So we have to stop talking and teaching and preaching and just go do.
One day we will finally see that when we reject any person or group of people, we reject a part of our very selves. All are one. All are in. All are God’s beloved children with a place at the table.
When we shrug and say we don’t care, it’s usually a lie. Every girl cares. We’ve just been taught not to expose ourselves by showing it. What the world needs now is girls and women who aren’t afraid to care – who are done saying, ‘Whatever.’
The amazing thing about love and attention and encouragement and grace and success and joy is that these things are infinite. We get a new supply every single morning, and so we can give it away all day. We never, ever have to monitor the supply of others or grab or hoard.
Rock bottom is a crisis. And everyone wants to avoid crisis. But what ‘crisis’ means literally is ‘to sift’ – like a child who goes to the beach, lifts up the sand, and watches all the sand fall away, hoping that there’s treasure left over. That’s what crisis does.
It is suggested to us a million times a day that our bodies are projects. They aren’t. Our lives are. Our spirituality is. Our relationships are. Our work is.
