Over the past few months, I have been blessed to work with a group of ten wonderful women who have taught me more about loving myself than I ever thought was possible. The following are part of the beautiful collection of quotes on self-love that we have shared with one another.
Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength- carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.
—Corrie Tem Boom
Perfectionism is very addictive because it is very seductive. It’s so great to think ‘There’s a way I can do things where I can never be held in judgment by other people, that I can totally escape criticism.’ But it doesn’t work.
—Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability
You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.
—Rumi
To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are.
—Kurt Cobain
One day I decided that I was beautiful, and so I carried out my life as if I was a beautiful girl. I wear colors that I really like, I wear makeup that makes me feel pretty, and it really helps. It doesn’t have anything to do with how the world perceives you. What matters is what you see. Your body is your temple, it’s your home, and you must decorate it.
—Gabourey Sidibe
Don’t you dare
Shrink yourself
For someone else’s comfort -
Do not become small
For people who refuse to grow.
-Unknown
Self-care includes holding each other accountable because we are interconnected. Loving ourselves includes learning how not to harm each other. Loving ourselves includes disrupting violent patterns in our homes and community-building spaces.
-Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Falling in love with yourself first doesn’t make you vain or selfish, it makes you indestructible.
Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.
—Gloria Steinem
The greatest gift you can give someone is the space to be his or herself, without the threat of you leaving.
—Kai, Lessons in Life #39
We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in.
—Ernest Hemingway
If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.
-Vincent Van Gogh
How do we forgive ourselves for all of the things we did not become?
-David ‘Doc’ Luben, “14 Lines from Love Letters or Suicide Notes”
The real challenge, the true commitment, the harsh discipline, is to have enough courage to accept who you are. That is, dare to be defenseless, vulnerable, open and porous to life in its entirety. Do not protect yourself of an experience by accepting someone else’s response as a prejudgment or dilution of the first-hand touch itself. You must be open always to the possibility, the probability in fact, the inevitability of the goodness, the beauty, the truth, the holiness of everything in Creation.
-Thomas Merton
For what it’s worth: It’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
Continue to share your heart with people even if it’s been broken.
-Amy Poehler
Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest — thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated
-Beau Taplin
My mother used to say to me, ‘You can’t eat beauty, it doesn’t feed you.’ And these words played and bothered me, I didn’t really understand them until finally I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume. It was something that I just had to be. And what my mother meant by saying that you can’t eat beauty is that you can’t rely on beauty to sustain you. What actually sustains us, what is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and those around you. That kind of beauty inflames the heart and enchants the soul.
-Lupita Nyong'o
You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like.
If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.
Set fire to your old self. It’s not needed here. It’s too busy shopping, gossiping about others, and watching days go by and asking why you haven’t gotten as far as you’d like. This old self will die and be forgotten by all but family, and replaced by someone who makes a difference.
-Julien Smith
Your mission: Be so busy loving your life that you have no time for hate, regret or fear.
-Unknown
There certainly is much at stake. I don’t know your story or your dreams or the things that steal your sleep but I know they matter. I hope your story is rich with characters, rich with friends and conversation. i hope you know some people who will carry you, and I hope you have the honor of carrying them. I hope that there is beauty in your memories, and I hope it doesn’t haunt you. And if it does, then I hope there is someone who will talk you through the night and remind you of the promise of a sunrise, that beauty keeps coming, that there are futures worth fighting for and waiting for, and that you were made to dream.
-Jamie Tworkowski
I have been bent and broken, but I hope, into a better shape
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Remember how far you’ve come, not just how far you have to go. You are not where you want to be, but neither are you where you used to be.
-Rick Warren
And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
-Colossians 3:14
