Lately, my heart is weary and my brain spins and spins and I must take a deep breath and slow down.

In these moments, the raw ones; the darker ones, I look for rays of light that give me hope and so I turn to these women and their words to set my heart ablaze.

*****

 “Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.”

~ Cheris Kramarae

*****

“My belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down.”

~ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

*****

“It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman 
Phenomenally.”

~ Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women

*****

“The best thing you can possibly do in your life is tackle the motherfucking shit out of love.”

~ Cheryl Strayed

*****

“Taking refuge in the Buddha means that we are willing to spend our life reconnecting with the quality of being continually awake.

Every time we feel like taking refuge in a habitual means of escape, we take off more armor, undoing all the stuff that covers over our wisdom and our gentleness and our awake quality.

We’re not trying to be something we aren’t; rather, we’re reconnecting with who we are.

So when we say, “I take refuge in the Buddha,” that means I take refuge in the courage and the potential of fearlessness, of removing all the armor that covers this awakeness of mine.

I am awake; I will spend my life taking this armor off.

Nobody else can take it off because nobody else knows where all the little locks are, nobody else knows where it’s sewed up tight, where it’s going to take a lot of work to get that particular iron thread untied.

You have to do it alone.”

~ Pema Chodron

Relephant:

> 11 Quotes to Change your Life (a Little).

> 5 Quotes to Break the Bad Day Blues.

> 11 Quotes to Inspire Self-Love. 

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