#thereof

Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you're a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace - and maybe even glory. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#humor

Recently, I’ve begun to think of scoliosis as a metaphor for my life. I’ve struggled to please teachers, employers, parents, boyfriends, husbands, twisting myself into someone I can’t be. I hurt when I do this, because it’s not natural. And it never works. But when I stretch my Self, instead, the results are different. When I’m reaching for my personal goals—to be a good mother, wife, friend and writer—I feel my balance return. And the sense of relief, as I become more the woman I truly am, is simply grand. ↗

— Linda Wisniewski

#life

Pain, too, comes from depths that cannot be revealed. We do not know whether those depths are in ourselves or elsewhere, in a graveyard, in a scarcely dug grave, only recently inhabited by withered flesh. This truth, which is banal enough, unravels time and the face, holds up a mirror to me in which I cannot see myself without being overcome by a profound sadness that undermines one's whole being. The mirror has become the route through which my body reaches that state, in which it is crushed into the ground, digs a temporary grave, and allows itself to be drawn by the living roots that swarm beneath the stones. It is flattened beneath the weight of that immense sadness which few people have the privilege of knowing. So I avoid mirrors. ↗

— Tahar Ben Jelloun

#eating-disorder #eating-disorders #mirrors #poetry #self-esteem

I'm as heterosexual as any person need be. I'm open about my relationships - or lack thereof - in my own life, because I want to make the case that gay isn't contagious. It's not something that you can catch or learn or choose. ↗

— Hal Sparks

#any #because #case #catch #choose

Why live in fear that he might find me disgusting someday, when I could make it happen right now? ↗

— Rachel Hartman

#fear #self-esteem-or-lack-thereof #beauty

When the Promise of American life is conceived as a national ideal, whose fulfillment is a matter of artful and laborious work, the effect thereof is substantially to identify the national purpose with the social problem. ↗

— Herbert Croly

#american life #artful #conceived #effect #fulfillment

For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#body-image #self-esteem-or-lack-thereof #beauty