Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. 

Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. 

Let reality be reality. 

Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

Lao Tzu  

It’s dark because you are trying too hard. 

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. 

Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. 

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. 

I was so preposterously serious in those days… 

Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me… 

So throw away your baggage and go forward. 

There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,

 trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. 

That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…

 Aldous Huxley, Island 

If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. 

If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. 

If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.

Nora Roberts

“As women, when we’re children we’re taught to enter the world with big hearts. Blooming hearts. Hearts bigger than our damn fists. We are taught to forgive - constantly - as opposed to what young boys are taught: Revenge, to get ‘even.’ Our empathy is constantly made appeals to, often demanded for. If we refuse to show kindness, we are reprimanded. We are not good women if we do not crush our bones to make more space for the world, if we do not spread our entire skin over rocks for others to tread on, if we do not kill ourselves in every meaning of the word in the process of making it cozy for everyone else. It is the heat generated by the burning of our bodies with which the world keeps warm. We are taught to sacrifice so much for so little. This is the general principle all over the world.

By the time we are young women, we are tired. Most of us are drained. Some of us enter a lock of silence because of that lethargy. Some of us lash out. When I think of that big, blooming heart we once had, it looks shriveled and worn out now. When I was teaching, I had a young student named Mariam. She was only 11 years old. Some boy pushed her around in class, called her names, broke her spirit the day. We were sitting under a chestnut tree on a field trip and she asked me if a boy ever hurt me. I told her many did and I destroyed them one by one. I think that’s the first time she ever heard the word ‘destroyed.’ We rarely teach our girls to fight back for the right reasons.

Take up more space as a woman. Take up more time. Take your time. You are taught to hide, censor, move about without messing up decorum for a man’s comfort. Whether it’s said or not, you’re taught balance. Forget that. Displease. Disappoint. Destroy. Be loud, be righteous, be messy. Mess up and it’s fine – you are learning to unlearn. Do not see yourself like glass. Like you could get dirty and clean. You are flesh. You are not constant. You change. Society teaches women to maintain balance and that robs us of our volatility. Our mercurial hearts. Calm and chaos. Love only when needed; preserve otherwise.

Do not be a moth near the light; be the light itself. Do not let a man’s ocean-big ego swallow you up. Know what you want. Ask yourself first. Decide your own pace. Decide your own path. Be cruel when needed. Be gentle only when needed. Collapse and then re-construct. When someone says you are being obscene, say yes I am. When they say you are being wrong, say yes I am. When they say you are being selfish, say yes I am. Why shouldn’t I be? How do you expect a woman to stand on her two feet if you keep striking her at the ankles.

There are multiple lessons we must teach our young girls so that they render themselves their own pillars instead of keeping male approval as the focal point of their lives. It is so important to state your feelings of inconvenience as a woman. We are instructed to tailor ourselves and our discomfort - constantly told that we are ‘whining’ and ‘nagging’ and ‘complaining too much.’ That kind of silence is horribly violent, that kind of insistence upon uniformly nodding in agreement to your own despair, and smiling emptily so no man is ever uncomfortable around us. Male-entitlement dictates a woman’s silence. If we could see the mimetic model of the erasure of a woman’s voice, it would be an incredibly bloody sight.

On a breezy July night, my mother and I were sleeping under the open sky. Before dozing off, I told her that I think there is a special place in heaven where all wounded women bury their broken hearts and their hearts grow into trees that only give fruit to the good and poison to the bad. She smiled and said Ameen. Then she closed her eyes.” —

A Woman of War by Mehreen Kasana 

If something burns your soul with purpose and desire,

it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it.

Charles Bukowski

Zao Wou-Ki

She did not need much, wanted very little. 

A kind word, sincerity, fresh air, clean water, a garden, kisses, books to read, 

sheltering arms, a cozy bed, and to love and be loved in return.

Starra Neely Blade 

A list of random and unrelated things to remember:

Time heals.

Mountain winds sound exactly like ocean waves.

You are worth everything now. 

Walls can be destroyed.

The sun always rises (and is always beautiful)

Children know the answers.

There is music in everything. 

Logic doesn’t produce magic.

Somewhere, somebody loves you.

You don’t need to choose mediocre when fire exists.

The moon orchestrates our nights and tides.

Trees can grow through rock. 

Your heart expands when it’s broken.

You should do it now.

Victoria Erickson

by ursula abresch

Making love was never about you and me in a bed. 

We made love whenever we held hands.

Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You 

for the love of nature

jeahyo lee

'it'

'You’ll get over it…' It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. 

To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. 

You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. 

The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? 

The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over

 is not made anodyne by death. 

This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. 

Why would I want them to?

Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

Nostalgia is a

dirty liar

that insists things

were better

than they seemed.

 Michelle K., I Can’t Stop Questioning It.