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"I no longer needed to peel myself of my skin, or to hide. To Dash the colorless ephemeral things that existed just beneath my surface were as vivid as the beauty marks he traced on my cheek."
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Exlpore more Authenticity quotes
"To be "great" is an ego goal; to be real is existential."
"Who are you not to be yourself?"
"It is important to live authentically who you are, to show yourself to your date as the bond between you builds."
"I like a look of agony, because I know it's true."
"Many of us have gotten so used to playing to the expectations of society, of our families,of our friends, and of our minds, that we don't even allow ourselves to consider who we really are or what we really need. We ignore the callsof our hearts, giving our lives, instead, to thedemands of an outside world built on fitting in.We can stop this, right now. We can choose to listen to ourselves, to heed our deepest callings,whatever they are. We can give ourselves thefreedom to be whoever the hell we want to bein this world. Right now, if we choose to.And why wouldn't we?"
"I take my cues from the world around me and carefully paint a self-portrait that the world can't help but accept. However, I would be much wiser to put down all such artistic notions and hold up the portrait of me painted by God simply because that is a picture at which the world can't help but marvel."
"Don't count on cheerleaders once you start living a life more reflective of your truth. They may not want to do somersaults and backflips for your awakening, not when they're still asleep. Don't let that stop you. Most of us have only been trained to cheer for conformity, to commend those who are just like us. But aren't you bored of being congratulated for fitting in? Aren't you tired of ignoring your heart's requests?Don't wait for cheerleaders. Be grateful if they show up, but you show up regardless, with or without them.You will never be defined by the reception you get from others, only by the truth with which you receive yourself. Be your biggest cheerleader. Love yourself. And applaud every single step you take toward truth."
"Of all individuals, the hated, the shunned, and the peculiar are arguably most themselves. They wear no masks whatsoever in order to be accepted and liked; they do seem most guarded, but only by their own hands: as compared to the populace, they are naked."
"People should see genuine, authentic love in the church."
Explore more quotes by Aspen Matis
"These tools were my parents' way of saying: What you're doing is important. We support it. We want to help you find your way."
"I made a conscious effort to name my needs and desires. To carefully listen to and accurately identify what I felt. Hunger, exhaustion, cold, lower-back ache, thirst. The ephemeral pangs: wistfulness and loneliness. Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament."
"He hadn't treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn't found it yet, but I would find it soon."
"I didn't know what I would do. There was no way I could survive. I stared at my damp tent ceiling, feeling the frigid air against me, the frozen ground against my bottom, so cold my bare skin burned. I needed to get to the next trail-town, Mammoth Lakes. There was no one here to save me now."
"My malady was submission.The symptom: my compliance.The antidote was loud clear boundaries."
"Children believe they are immortal, death is an empty word like the name of a country they've never been to on a time-faded map. I wasn't a child anymore."
"Each year, Gracie Henderson moons a thousand strangers, collects their shocked faces in an annual photo album."
"But I couldn't say any of this yet. No one answer felt it could contain anything close to the truth about her. My thoughts of my mother were wild chaos, I didn't know how to tell him we'd been enmeshed for as long as I could remember."
"If I couldn't find the trail before dark, I could wake tomorrow disoriented and desperate, without having even made any new miles; my loss of the PCT should have distressed me, but a new instinct led me forward. In this moment of despair I was refusing to stop fighting. I asked the mountains for some guidance, the strength to get myself out of here, and pulled wild power from within myself I'd never known I'd had.I was no longer following a trail.I was learning to follow myself."
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