The truth is that cleaning up socks and trying to get someone to really listen to you is marriage. It's less sweep you off your feet and more sweep the kitchen four times a day. Like everything good in life, it's 98% back-breaking work and 2% moments that make the work worthwhile.
We all have this misunderstanding about heartbreak, which is we think we should avoid it. But what I think is that heartache is a clue toward the work we're supposed to be doing in the world. What breaks each person's heart is different - be it racial injustice, war, or animals. And when you figure out what it is that breaks yours, go toward it.
I'm nothing if not a tangled, colorful ball of contradictions.
I am not bound to spend my precious days on Earth trying to keep up with the Joneses - because the Joneses are really just a bunch of folks in conference rooms changing 'trends' rapidly to create fake monthly emergencies for us.
We're told that to be successful girls, we have to be small and quiet. Yet to be successful humans, we have to become big and have a voice. There's an inherent contradiction.
Compassion does not just happen. Pity does, but compassion is not pity. It's not a feeling. Compassion is a viewpoint, a way of life, a perspective, a habit that becomes a discipline - and more than anything else, compassion is a choice we make that love is more important than comfort or convenience.
'Brave' is very specific and extremely personal. It can't be judged by people on the outside. Just can't. Sometimes brave means letting everyone else think you're a coward. Sometimes brave is letting everyone else down but yourself.
I know how I like my house. I like it cute and cozy and a little funky, and I like it to feel lived in and worn, and I like the things inside of it to work. That's all. And for me, it's fine that my house's interior suggests that I might not spend every waking moment thinking about how it looks.
I hated writing 'Love Warrior.' It's the hardest thing I've every written. I cried.
If we are going to ask for our daily bread, we've got to take the time to receive it and eat it. God provide, but we've got to slow down long enough to taste and see.
When people express opinions that differ from yours, take it as a chance to grow. Seek to understand over being understood. Be curious, not defensive. The only way to disarm another human being is by listening.
To me, full-time mothering felt like way too much and yet not nearly enough. Lost in a landslide of diapers, birthday parties, and others' needs, I ached to reestablish myself.
The Internet has become my enabler. It keeps me from stillness and discomfort, and this keeps me from growing.
When we shrug and say we don't care, it's usually a lie. Every girl cares. We've just been taught not to expose ourselves by showing it. What the world needs now is girls and women who aren't afraid to care - who are done saying, 'Whatever.'
We are all trained by Disney to believe that the wedding is the finish line, but the wedding is just another starting line. In light of this fact, we should quit the huge, fancy, debt-inducing weddings.
I've seen my name on marquees and bowed to standing ovations. I've also been called a fraud, a mental case, a heretic. People all over the country wait in line to hug me or curse me.
I realized I didn't just want to parent children in my own little home but to mother the whole world. What's the point of gaining influence if you're not going to use it?
It makes no sense to me that my gay friends cannot get married to each other because a certain slice of Christianity doesn't believe in gay marriage.
Questions are like gifts - it's the thought behind them that the receiver really feels. We have to know the receiver to give the right gift and to ask the right question. Generic gifts and questions are all right, but personal gifts and questions feel better.
The hardest part of living without social media was remembering that my little life was enough, so I could just stay there and live it without asking for anyone else's permission or validation. I realized that for me, posting is like asking the world, 'Do you 'like' me?'
