I guess I really miss being myself. None of it feels like me. It feels like doable, bearable, and helpful. I don’t want to sugar coat it. The worlds changed and it’s not geared toward being a woman, or even human… maybe it never was or will be.

I’m tired. Yet, I’m still determined. I don’t believe this is our ceiling.

There has to be something better waiting for the ones who come after us.

Do not fear their reaction to you. It is not worth folding yourself into something so small that you fail to exist. Find the other strange ones who are still trying. Then go home, close the door, and return to your works and love.

Life is short. Most people are understandably focused on their own lives, goals, and priorities.

Likability was never a reliable measure of goodness. It was sometimes simply nothing more than a sign of how much had been suppressed. What becomes possible, slowly, is disappointing others without disappearing in the process.

Releasing the need for approval requires allowing others their disappointment, risking being misread, accepting that integrity may cost belonging. It doesn't reject connection. It denies the hidden contracts of self-denial that connections sometimes ask for.

When I remember the dock, I no longer think about the person I was trying to escape.

I think about the woman sitting quietly among the reeds and lilies, listening to the water, unaware that she was practicing for the rest of her life.