"Often, aromantic-spectrum women will find themselves being compelled to reject "traditional" womanhood not because they have anything against it in particular, but because they so closely associate femininity with dating and romance. In these cases, it's not necessarily about a questioning of gender at all (although that can certainly be another layer of it), but about wanting to reject the stereotypes that surround gender." — Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca Sounds Fake but Okay
"Some aspecs also find themselves wanting to distance themselves from the parts of their gender or presentation that are sexualizing—or parts of their bodies that are not sexual by nature but often sexualized within the broader culture." — Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca Sounds Fake but Okay
"I saw a river of clouds drifting through the canyon below us, swallowing the ground and remaking it into a moving mass of shadows, curves, and drifts that was the most spectacular portrayal of beauty my eyes have had the pleasure of taking in. I started crying in disbelief. Then crying in belief. How often is it that we have the opportunity to pause and take in the moments of beauty that surround us? I had not experienced something that forced me to see my own grandeur and the beauty of it all, or to reckon with the work that I've put into arriving here. I found myself in the center of all of that, celebrating this arrival as I felt my humanity swimming through my body as I swam my way up the chimney... A pause to let yourself listen to and sing with the birds, to witness the magnificence of your surroundings, and yourself within them; a pause to allow yourself to be in awe." — Heather Smallpage "The Fluidity of Grief and Beauty", AAC Guidebook, issue XVI
"We can't fail if we never give it an honest try, or whatever Yoda didn't say." — Aidan Multhauf Alpinist Magazine, Issue 87, "Twenty Classic Climbs in Twenty Days"
"Resilience doesn't come from comfort. And so I'm not wishing you a life free of discomfort. I'm wishing you a life where you can handle the discomforts that are inevitably going to come. And I think about that's what my journey in the mountains so much has taught me is not how to prevent all of the things that don't feel good, but how to lean into the ones that are there to teach us." — Melissa Arnot Reid Outside Podcast, "Climbing Everest is Easy Compared to Surviving an Abusive Parent"
"Fear lives in a past experience or in a future assumption of what might happen." — Kimmy Fasani Outside Podcast: What Snowboarding Has to do With Parenthood, Loss, and Cancer
"I really try to see [each spot I visit] with new eyes, because I don't want to become complacent just because I've lived here for so long. I want to see everything new all the time. [I want] to be always open and aware of my environment and the new things that it's telling me, or the old things that it's reminding me of." — Alexandra de Steiguer HumaNature Podcast Episode 124: The Woman of Star Island
"It would be so much easier to stay home now, but then I wouldn’t find out what happens next." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"If we stay in the story too long, it becomes a cage." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Trying to find happiness in “having” or in someone else’s version of it is like chasing the horizon: you might end up where you were looking, but you’ll never recognize it because your eyes are still fixed outward." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Relentlessly pursuing happiness can subconsciously reinforce discontent because the story we’re telling ourselves is that we aren’t happy." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. / Just keep going. No feeling is final." — Rainer Maria Rilke Go to the Limits of your Longing
"I am and always will be the optimist. The hoper of far-flung hopes and the dreamer of improbable dreams." — 11th Doctor Doctor Who, "The Almost People"
"We’re all stories, in the end… just make it a good one, eh?" — 11th Doctor Doctor Who, "The Big Bang"
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Airman's Odyssey
"This, I believe, is why time moves so slowly as a child – why school days creep by and summer breaks stretch on. Your brain is paying attention to every second. It must as it learns the patterns of living. Every second has value. But as you get older, and the patterns become more obvious, time speeds up. Especially once you find your groove in the working world. The layout of your days becomes predictable, a routine, and once your brain reliably knows what’s next, it reclines and closes its eyes. Time pours through your hands like sand." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"If we’ve written the endings before we’ve lived them, we’re doomed for disappointment." — Andrew Steven Adventure Journal, "Trail Weight: Losing 100 Pounds to Hike the John Muir Trail"
"Each of us has a mash-up of talents and experiences and potential that plants something in us, and becomes a dream...A dream is the myriad ways we could be fulfilled in life using our talents to make beautiful things. But then there are goals. Goals are specific guesses at what we could do or become to fulfill our dream. Dreams are like a compass that points in a general direction, and goals are the islands in the ocean along the way." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"Of course, goals help us get a lot done. But they often remove our attention from the experience to the achievement." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine." — Darren Hardy The Compound Effect
