”We get in trouble all the time on the show for saying vagina [even though it’s a medical show]. You can say penis but not vagina, it’s a whole ‘Standards and Practices’ thing. They have more of a problem with the word vagina than with the word penis. So of course Shonda Rhimes puts it 45 times in one script.” -Ellen Pompeo
In relationships you have ups and downs, ebbs and flows. Martyrdom is no way to have a relationship. It breeds resent. Resent is a blank check, when cashed it bankrupts many a relationship.
Reblogging this from myself because I just sent some of these quotes to BD for her February Blackfirmations project and I was struck by the degree to which the love ethic hooks describes has shaped my whole relationship with JJ. It’s funny to be I-want-as-much-of-you-in-my-life-as-possible-for-as-long-as-possible me looking at me from the beginning of our relationship (we’d been out I think 4 times at the time of this post) talking about how “love [had] always felt very out of my league.” Love is a life-changing thing.
All About Love: New Visions is a book by bell hooks, and if you are a person who likes to think critically about your relationships, romantic, platonic, or otherwise, you need to read it. Like, now.
I will freely admit that love is a word that thoroughly intimidates me, though at the same time it’s a word some would say I overuse. I would say that it’s a term I understood how to apply to friends, and had always applied liberally to family members, but is not a term (or even a concept) I felt comfortable with when you combined it with romance or sexual affection. In that context, “love” has always felt very out of my league. This has caused problems in the past.
I know what it feels like to like someone. To be infatuated. To feel an instant sort of “click” or connection–some might call it a…
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Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.
–Ella Fitzgerald
(via Molten Soul)
The fact that 53 years later neither segregation nor discrimination have been eliminated indicates the eagerness with which white Americans have adopted the idea that securing racial justice was a matter of the passing of a law and the martyrdom of a great man.
—Chris Lebron, “What, To the Black American, Is Martin Luther King Jr. Day?”
(via KEW)
When you find yourself drowning in self-hate, you have to remind yourself that you weren’t born feeling this way. That at some point in your journey, some person or experience sent you the message that there was something wrong with who you are, and you internalized those messages and took them on as your truth. But that hate isn’t yours to carry, and those judgments aren’t about you. And in the same way that you learned to think badly of yourself, you can learn to think new, self-loving and accepting thoughts. You can learn to challenge those beliefs, take away their power, and reclaim your own. It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen over night. But it is possible. And it starts when you decide that there has to be more to life than this pain you feel. It starts when you decide that you deserve to discover it.
–Daniell Koepke
You must cultivate activities that you love. You must discover work that you do, not for its utility, but for itself. Think of something that you love to do for itself, whether it succeeds or not, whether you are praised for it or not, whether you are loved and rewarded for it or not, whether people know about it and are grateful to you for it or not. How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul? Find them out, cultivate them, for they are your passport to freedom and to love.
—Anthony De Mello, The Way to Love
(via LivingLovingListeningLearning)
I need to work on this. I really enjoy hosting events, but that can’t really be a regular activity. My birthday party this past weekend was awesome, though. I like baking — that’s something I do for me (though sometimes I do it for other people). Boo and I have been playing a video game recently and I really enjoy it, but I don’t think I’m into it enough that I want to buy a system of some sort and start gaming again myself. I read a lot, but while I definitely enjoy it, sometimes it feels like it’s just a thing I do to pass the time. Internetting is the same way. I want to create more, but most of my writing recently has been personal, directed specifically at people, and I struggle to feel as though that is creative. I haven’t felt much like blogging. I want to spend more time with my friends. I like them. But they also aren’t a hobby.
I need to find something that I truly enjoy doing alone. I hate feeling like I spend my free time waiting to do things with boo or other people.
*shrug *
Tales of a traveling Tiger. From Princeton to California to London and beyond.
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