Glennon Doyle

"Boys don’t cry is how men learn to die inside."

- Glennon Doyle

"What if parenting became less about telling our children who they should be and more about asking them again and again forever who they already are?"

- Glennon Doyle

"Being human is not hard because you're doing it wrong, it's hard because you're doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy."

- Glennon Doyle

"It’s okay to feel all of the stuff you’re feeling. You’re just becoming human again. You’re not doing life wrong; you’re doing it right. If there’s any secret you’re missing, it’s that doing it right is just really hard. Feeling all your feelings is hard, but that’s what they’re for. Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even the hard ones. The secret is that you’re doing it right and that doing it right hurts sometimes."

- Glennon Doyle

"Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist. What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear—to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live. If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room—our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent."

- Glennon Doyle

"Marathoners: Life is too easy. I must find a way to make it much, much harder."

- Glennon Doyle

"If you feel something calling you to dance or write or paint or sing, please refuse to worry about whether you’re good enough. Just do it. Be generous. Offer a gift to the world no one else can offer: yourself."

- Glennon Doyle

"What I thought would kill me, didn’t. Every time I said to myself: I can’t take this anymore—I was wrong. The truth was that I could and did take it all—and I kept surviving. Surviving, again and again, made me less afraid of myself, of other people, of life."

- Glennon Doyle

"Stop spending all day obsessing, cursing, perfecting your body like it’s all you’ve got to offer the world. Your body is not your art, it’s your paintbrush. Whether your paintbrush is a tall paintbrush or a thin paintbrush or a stocky paintbrush or a scratched up paintbrush is completely irrelevant. What is relevant is that YOU HAVE A PAINTBRUSH which can be used to transfer your insides onto the canvas of your life — where others can see it and be inspired and comforted by it."

- Glennon Doyle

"When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who have detoxed themselves so completely from the world’s expectations that they are full of nothing but themselves. What we need are women who are full of themselves. A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say and do what must be done. She lets the rest burn."

- Glennon Doyle

"Grief shatters. If you let yourself shatter and then you put yourself back together, piece by piece, you wake up one day and realize that you have been completely reassembled."

- Glennon Doyle

"You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it’s hard. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because it hurts for everybody. Don’t avoid the pain. You need it. It’s meant for you. Be still with it, let it come, let it go, let it leave you with the fuel you’ll burn to get your work done on this earth."

- Glennon Doyle

"Grief is love’s souvenir. It’s our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price."

- Glennon Doyle

"My most important parenting job is to teach my children how to deal with being human. There is really only one way to deal gracefully with being human, and that is: forgive yourself."

- Glennon Doyle

"A good day is a good day. A bad day is a good story."

- Glennon Doyle

"P.S. You’re not going to die. Here’s the truth: It feels like you are. It feels like a lion is chasing you. It feels like a bear has spotted you. But it’s just the anxiety. You’re safe."

- Glennon Doyle

"Don’t let yourself become so concerned with raising a good kid that you forget you already have one."

- Glennon Doyle

"Treat yourself like someone you love."

- Glennon Doyle

"Self-love means that I have a relationship with myself built on trust and loyalty. I trust myself to have my own back, so my allegiance is to the voice within."

- Glennon Doyle

"This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been."

- Glennon Doyle