Almost Feminist

[almost-feminist-af]

A good description of patience is learning to relax with the edginess of our energy.

Pema Chödrön, No Time To Lose, p165, 2005.

[almost-feminist-af]

When we're heavily invested in our likes and dislikes, tiny reactions can escalate into violence and war.

Pema Chödrön, No Time To Lose, p164, 2005.

[almost-feminist-af]

The point is to acknowledge our own anger and the way it harms us as much as it harms others.

Pema Chödrön, No Time To Lose, p163, 2005.

[almost-feminist-af]

Another instruction that I've found helpful is to stay with your soft spot. Below the anger is enormous tenderness, which most of us quickly cover over with the hardness of rage. Learning to touch that vulnerability isn't easy, but it can keep you from exploding and destroying everything in sight.

Pema Chödrön, No Time To Lose, p162, 2005.

[almost-feminist-af]

If you frequently explode in anger, people never feel comfortable in your presence and you'll never have peace of mind.

Pema Chödrön, No Time To Lose, p161, 2005.

[almost-feminist-af]

Good works gathered in a thousand ages, Such deeds of generosity, Or offerings to the blissful ones--- A single flash of anger shatters them.

Shantideva, 6.1.

[almost-feminist-af]

Is it worth the paranoia, betrayal, and loss?

Kid Cudi

[almost-feminist-af]

She sensed in her brother a kind of insecurity, as though trying to scare her was not some cruel way to pass the time, but a vital means of proving something to himself. She wondered if all boys were like this, their meanness a self-defense.

Omar El Akkad, American War, p17, 2017.

[almost-feminist-af]

He was almost three years older than her, and a boy---a different species altogether.

Omar El Akkad, American War, p17, 2017.

[almost-feminist-af]

Those creatures who've survived in the long run have survived in the long run; you don't survive in the long run by hyper-exploiting your surroundings; you survive in the long run by improving your habitat, it's not survival of the fittest, it's survival of the fit---meaning how well do you fit into your natural surroundings, how much do you make the world a better place by your existence?

Derrick Jenson

[almost-feminist-af]

You are not alone, and you have a responsibility to the people you identify with to let them know that they are not alone.

Audre Lorde

[almost-feminist-af]

It was years before we learned to use the strength daily survival provides.

Audre Lorde

[almost-feminist-af]

When the brothas want to break you open to see what works inside...

Audre Lorde, UCLA, ~1990.

[almost-feminist-af]

In the moment, I'm not sure what to do with this insight other than to be with it.

Heather Lynn Mann, Ocean of Insight, p24, 2016.

[almost-feminist-af]

For the first time, I heard my incessant inner voice for what it was: a selfish, neurotic wreck.

Heather Lynn Mann, Ocean of Insight, p23, 2016.

[almost-feminist-af]

A long time after that summer of '55 and I'm still trying to make precise sense of my deep fear, my father's deep anger, my own deep anger, my father's deep fear, strutting peacock cars, fathers and sons afraid of each other. War and hate and terror and love.

John Edgar Wideman, Writing To Save A Life, p69, 2017.

[almost-feminist-af]

When someone was in pain, the only way I could avoid sharing the suffering was not to look.

Octavia Butler, Parable Of The Talents, p33, 1998.