Dawna Markova Quotes & Sayings

I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. — Dawna Markova

I wonder why it is that we so often imprison ourselves in the opinions of other people. There can be no punishment worse than conspiring in our own diminishment. — Dawna Markova

I need to take a sacred pause, as if I were a sun warmed rock in the center of a rushing river. — Dawna Markova

To explore what it would mean to live fully, sensually alive and passionately on purpose, I have to drop my preconceived ideas of who and what I am. — Dawna Markova

The future exists only in our imagination
it is a collective story waiting for our voices to express
that can only happen when you and I are willing to enter the emptiness
listening in the silence
until we can begin to create a future we can befriend. — Dawna Markova

As adults, we must ask more of our children than they know how to ask of themselves. What can we do to foster their open-hearted hopefulness, engage their need to collaborate, be an incentive to utilize their natural competency and compassion ... show them ways they can connect, reach out, weave themselves into the web of relationships that is called community. — Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life. — Dawna Markova

Once you begin to acknowledge random acts of kindness - both the ones you have received and the ones you have given - you can no longer believe that what you do does not matter. — Dawna Markova

To be educated is not so much to be taught as it is to be awakened to who you really are. — Dawna Markova

I don't think anyone "finds" joy. Rather, we cultivate it by searching for the preciousness of small things, the ordinary miracles, that strengthen our hearts so we can keep them open to what is difficult — Dawna Markova

LEARNING IS DISCOVERING THAT SOMETHING IS POSSIBLE — Dawna Markova

Reignite the fire in your heart. Live on purpose. — Dawna Markova

My journal has become a paper mirror, a topographic map to my mind. It is where I go to sort out confusion and decipher the invisible. — Dawna Markova

When cancer first came into my life, people all around me treated it as the enemy. I was told I had to join the medical team and we'd fight together to defeat it. This was the wrong thing to say to someone who was the last one to be picked for any team. I was much happier sitting on the sidelines and encouraging the other players. I was totally unskilled at defeating anything. So I secretly went my own way and decided that I was free to choose the meaning of the healing experience. I decided I would develop a friendly relationship with the cancer, which was something I was good at. — Dawna Markova

You survived as a child because others helped to maintain your life. It continues to be true today, even when you think you are abandoned, rejected, neglected, and unloved: the tomatoes you eat sustain you, the crossing guard stops the traffic so you can get to the other side of the street, the dinner offered to you on clean white plates nourishes you, the paper on which these words are printed informs you. Noticed or ignored, this web of others protects and holds you and makes it possible for you to make a difference: to take what came to you as seed and pass it on as blossom, and what came as blossom and ripen it to fruit. — Dawna Markova

Forgiveness in no way justifies the actions that caused your wounding, nor does it mean that you have to seek out those who harmed you. It is simply a movement to release and ease your heart of the pain and hatred that binds it. It is the harvested fruit of a season of darkness, followed by a season of growth and of very hard work. — Dawna Markova

Gratitude is like a flashlight. If you go out in your yard at night and turn on a flashlight, you suddenly can see what's there. It was always there, but you couldn't see it in the dark. — Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible; to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit. — Dawna Markova

When we find ourselves devoid of passion and purpose, the first thing we need to do is stop. But that's not easy. The rest of the world is zooming by at full speed. Left alone with ourselves, without a project to occupy us, we can become nervous and self-critical about what we should be doing and feeling. This can be so uncomfortable that we look for any distraction rather than allowing ourselves the space to be as we are. — Dawna Markova

The moments you are given are your true wealth. You don't need power, influence, or fame. The sunlight brings the power; the wind carries the influence. And as for fame, well, when you allow yourself to notice all those hands that have made your growth possible, you will also recognize what you have made possible for countless others - and how famous you already are. In this very moment, one of those others may be telling a story about how you helped them grow forward. — Dawna Markova

The practice of kindness is the daily, friendly, homely caring form of love. It is both humble-a schoolboy bringing his teacher a bouquet of dandelions-and exalted-a fireman giving his life to save someone else's. Kindness is love with hands and hearts and minds. It is both whimsical-causing our faces to crack into a smile-and deeply touching-causing our eyes to shimmer with tears. And its miraculous nature is such that the more acts of kindness we offer, the more of them we have to give, for acts of kindness are always drawn from the endless well of love. — Dawna Markova

From the time we begin school, if not sooner, we are taught to be blind to our assets and only see our deficits. We are carefully marked on how many we got wrong on a test and, rarely if ever, asked how we know how to spell the ones we got right. By the time we are adults, we are well versed in every one of our limitations, skilled in our incompetence. If we were fish in an aquarium, it would be as if we kept smashing against the glass, and forgot the fact that we were perfectly capable of turning ever so slightly and swimming gracefully in the water all around us. — Dawna Markova

Living on purpose requires us to find what we love fiercely, give it all we've got and then pass it on, as if it were a torch, to those who follow — Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life ... I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me ... I choose to risk my significance. — Dawna Markova

If you took a blue spruce tree and planted it in the desert, it would obviously perish. How do we forget that we too are living systems, and each of us have unique environments, needs, and conditions within which we flourish or wither? — Dawna Markova

The tears had turned to ink ... — Dawna Markova

In my better moments, I think of apathy as purpose's sleep. In my worse moments, when I'm trying to fix it or get rid of it, I call it feeling lazy, depressed, or useless. — Dawna Markova

As with any other great force of nature, there is both glory and danger in the stories we tell ourselves. Some are toxic and keep our problems festering. Others are tonic and bring us beyond the limitations of our previous history. To be in a life of our own definition, we must be able to discover which stories we are following and determine which ones help us grow the most interesting possibilities. — Dawna Markova

Through fear of knowing who we really are we sidestep our own destiny, which leaves us hungry in a famine of our own making ... we end up living numb, passionless lives, disconnected from our soul's true purpose. But when you have the courage to shape your life from the essence of who you are, you ignite, becoming truly alive. — Dawna Markova

Kindness is twice blessed. It blesses the one who gives it with a sense of his or her own capacity to love, and the person who receives it with a sense of the beneficence of the universe. — Dawna Markova