This is a "love saves" story.

Learning to love all of me—including the parts I used to be scared of—made the fear go away.

I do not believe the acts of oppressors are my people’s shame.

We teach girls to be likeable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach boys the same. This is dangerous.

I feel disoriented when I’m in a new place or situation and can’t figure out whether the rules are real or imaginary.

It’s important to honor the footprint others leave on our heart.

For Workshop 3, Are We Doing the Right Things? Activity 1, Turning Points

I take care of myself first, because I am deserving of exquisite care. I take care of myself to maintain the capacity to help others. I move and stretch my body every day. I spend time in nature, attuning my senses to the earth's wisdom. I ration my daily exposure to the news....

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”...

We all have our foibles; pieces of ourselves that we both admire and occasionally revile. These gifts and struggles exist in tandem.

Pleasure reminds us to enjoy being alive and on purpose... Pleasure—embodied, connected pleasure—is one of the way we know when we are free. That we are always free. That we always have the power to co-create the world. Pleasure helps us move through the times that are unfair, through grief and...

These opening words are formatted for two readers, as indicated below....

The crisis was an opportunity to learn to be fully me and love it, inner turmoil and all. I learned that strength comes from authenticity, never from perfection.

I was made this way, in this body and this skin. Like all beings, I have an inherent good that cannot be eclipsed.

We can be cheerleaders for simple joys (even when we don't share them) and compassionate about the fact that we’re all just trying to survive.

The road not taken is not a fork. That’s too simple a thought, flipping some coin. Either/or. Nope. It’s not this or that. No or yes. It’s nor/ neither and all of the above and more. The road taken goes every way at once. There. There. They. Them. Go. Now. Live.

In her 1975 theological treatise Suffering, German liberation theologian Dorothee Söelle* examines the ways that suffering can knit humans beings closer together, and can draw us more fully into the process of loving. She uses the term apatheia, “the inability to suffer,” to describe the...

You matter. There is no one like you; never will be again, from the birth of the earth to its outermost end. You — an eager shout, a sacred “Yes!” that moves your flesh, your bone, your breath. You— she, he, ze, they, you are whole and okay, gracefully teaching your truth and your way. You...

Settle your mind upon the strength, the power that is yours. Draw that strength into your heart. Draw it up into your soul. As we gather together the many waters of this community, we need each of your power, each of your resilience, each of your love to make us whole.

We speak so often of brokenness in religious life, Let us speak today of wholeness....