“Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.”— Jane Kenyon
(via thewordsbeingthere)
Not to be like “we live in a society” but I think a lot of people’s mental health would be significantly less fucked if they didn’t have to function in a system that forces them to think about their value as a human being as based on how productive they are/how much money people can make off them
This.
“It wasn’t sudden. He was born four months early. The organs didn’t have enough time to mature. He just wasn’t ready for life. But he held on for more than two years. He was such a happy child. He laughed so hard when you rocked him. We called him ‘Bibi,’ because his older brother couldn’t say ‘baby.’ Toward the end, he was learning to stand on his own. We honestly thought he was going to make it. But his immune system was just too weak from all the medication. And his lungs were too weak from all the machines. He couldn’t survive. I had a hard childhood growing up. This place makes you tough. Nigerians and cockroaches will be the last living things on this planet. I can remember being nine years old, and sitting down with my brothers to make a plan when we ran out of food. Our only idea was to drink a lot of water. So I’ve always had to be strong. When my brother died, I couldn’t mourn. I was the oldest in the family. I had to hold it together and make arrangements. But not this time. After Bibi, I decided that I don’t ever have to be strong again. That was my child. I can’t button this one up. Either I allow myself to be weak, or I’m never going to get through it.”
(Lagos, Nigeria)
(Source: humansofnewyork)
“Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude. Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.”
Jeff Foster
(Source: jacindaelena, via divinesera)
“Being what you are looks like this: You enter every room as a calm, neutral observer. You are average. You don’t have an agenda. Your only job is to listen and observe and offer your support. Your only job is to watch and learn and allow room for yourself, even when you don’t say a word, even when you don’t look that good, even when you seem useless. There you are, giving yourself the right to be without running or hiding or dancing. That is grace. It matters.
Being still and silent and broken is its own kind of religion.
Doing this — existing around other people without proving yourself — works well because it feels good. It feels good when you’re not trying hard to win people over. It feels good to stand without adornment and know that you are enough. But it also works because good people respond to it. Trustworthy people will accept and embrace your listening and support and your silence. Untrustworthy people will think you’re a fucking weirdo, or believe that you’re not worthy enough because you’re not dancing or running or staying half-hidden and building suspense.
In contrast, it is exceptionally difficult to feel connected or close to other people when you’re sure that your value is conditional. You can spend decades in this state, and the more energy you put into keeping other people happy, the more convinced you become that no one is dependable and no one loves you for you. That doesn’t mean that you haven’t withstood abuse or tolerated selfish friends. But refusing to give yourself the right to simply exist is a way of preventing other people from simply existing. Everything is bartered or traded. No relationship is what it is: lopsided and weird and flawed and sweet. Every effort must be reciprocated with equal and opposite force (even if your emotional accounting is never shared with anyone) or you’re being ripped off or taken for granted. No one is allowed to be broken. You have to be better than you really are, and so does everyone else.
Once you develop an independent faith in your own value (this takes constant, repeated reminders to be compassionate and patient with yourself for the first time ever), then you can start to treat other people as valuable even when their value isn’t immediately apparent. You can enter the room as a broken person, sit with your brokenness without hiding it, and let it exist out in the open. You don’t have to share your own secrets straight out of the gate. You can ask people about the things that broke them, because you understand that being broken is interesting and includes a good story, or maybe 100 good stories. You listen to their stories not because you expect that then they’ll listen to yours, but because you’re making it your goal to take in reality, to connect, to get closer to the real world and the real people who live in it.”
Ask Polly: How Do I Start Over Now That I Know How Damaged I Am?
(via divinesera)
Deleting your paragraph to text back “okay” = GROWTH
Deleting your one word reply to type out how you actually feel in a constructive and honest manner = GROWTH
not wasting your energy on someone/something that isn’t worth it = GROWTH
realizing something is important to you and actually taking the to address it, instead of brushing it off and not communicating effectively = GROWTH
we’re feeling grown in this chili’s tonight
(via divinesera)
“woman never under your thumb, says skull that was a head, says bloodshot eyes, says I’m the Kali woman the killer woman women with salt on her tongue fire that cleans fire that catches fire burns hotter as I go woman traded her secrets never, says woman reversed the poles, says woman never left America to know this but she did, says, she did leave woman combs snakes out of her hair woman combs demons out of her hair woman lies down with the cobra then meditates under cobra canopy woman had a bone in her throat, says was it yours? says she admits she has a taste for you, says she’s cannibal woman, Kali woman woman’s tongue once split in ten directions one: I’m a savage woman two: I’m the rutting woman three: I’m the fire dancer with coal-black feet four: Im the old-time thinker five: poseur woman six: I’m the redacteur seven: auteur eight: I haunt you with my songs nine: I was the nun now I am bound by desire again ten: I’m the cittipatti woman the dancing-skull woman mouth is moving, says skull-mouth moving, says says these things says terrible things as I go mouth is gaping tongue is bleeding everywhere suffering, as I go I’m the celebrity woman I’m the luminary woman I’m the standout woman I’m the braggart woman I’m the shrew at the window woman I’m the stigma woman the beaten woman the disgraced woman hag woman where will I go? who will have me? water clean me water clean me, as I go I’m the camouflaged woman I’m the assuaged woman I’m the ravenous woman I’m the Kali Yuga woman high-pitched woman not a trifling woman hissing woman I’m the woman with the fangs I’m the woman with the guns I’m the woman with tomes I’m the hook woman I’m the stolen book woman fire that burns as I go woman was in the world was walking woman was singing sounding the day away sounds like a cranky old machine, someone said (that someone was a mean man, mean child-man) but she just ignored the cranky old machine part & went on her way woman took her haughty self out of the sky she had a nose that tall how tall? that! & stuck up it was mincy mincy mincy mincy she cried mincy mincy mincy she was burning all right her house (the one she carried on her head) was afire”— Anne Waldman, from Fast Speaking Woman, 1945 (via commovente)
(Source: nikita-ermakov)
