Glennon Doyle Melton Quotes & Sayings

The only meaningful thing we can offer one another is love. Not advice, not questions about our choices, not suggestions for the future, just love. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Speaking of messy, I recently quit parenting. I do not parent in August. August parenting is not a good look for me. It's hotter than hell, and the children and I have already had a whole lot of togetherness. — Glennon Doyle Melton

My unforgiveness is just another easy button. We aren't different. We are exactly the same. We are individual pieces of a scattered puzzle and we are just a little lost down here. We are all desperate for reunion and we are trying to find it in all the wrong places. We use bodies and drugs and food to try to end our loneliness, because we don't understand that we're lonely down here because we are supposed to be lonely. Because we're in pieces. To be human is to be incomplete and constantly yearning for reunion. Some reunions just require a long, kind patience. — Glennon Doyle Melton

...what if the transporting (to a pain-free place) is keeping me from transformation? What if my anger, my fear, my loneliness were never mistakes, but invitations? What if in skipping the pain, I was missing my lessons? Instead of running away from the pain, was I supposed to run towards it? ...Maybe instead of slamming the door on pain, I need to throw open the door wide and say, "Come in. Sit down with me. And don't leave until you've taught me what I need to know. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Marketers need us to believe that our pain is a mistake that can be solved with their product. — Glennon Doyle Melton

We think our job as humans is to avoid pain, our job as parents is to protect our children from pain, and our job as friends is to fix each other's pain. Maybe that's why we all feel like failures so often - because we all have the wrong job description for love. — Glennon Doyle Melton

If our goal is to be tolerant of people who are different than we are, Chase, then we really are aiming quite low. Traffic jams are to be tolerated. People are to be celebrated. — Glennon Doyle Melton

My courage will come from knowing I can handle whatever I encounter there -- because I was designed by my creator to not only survive pain and love but also to become whole inside it. I was born to do this. I am a Warrior. — Glennon Doyle Melton

them to embrace being human instead — Glennon Doyle Melton

I consider the possibility that I've been right and wrong my whole life. I was right to want to be beautiful and sexy; I was just wrong to have accepted someone else's idea of what those words mean. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I promised myself it would all be okay if I followed three simple rules: Show Up, Be Brave, and Be Kind. No — Glennon Doyle Melton

What I Know: 1. What you don't know, you're not supposed to know yet. 2. More will be revealed. 3 Crisis means to sift. Let it all fall away and you'll be left with what matters. 4.What matters most cannot be taken away. 5. Just do the next right thing one thing at a time. That'll take you all the way home. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Learning how to gracefully accept criticism and compliments is hard, but I'm trying. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Education is like Christmas. We're all just opening our gifts, one at a time. And it is a fact that each and every child has a bright shiny present with her name on it, waiting there underneath the tree. God wrapped it up, and he'll let us know when it's time to unwrap it. In the meantime, we must believe that our children are okay. Every last one of them. The straight-A ones and the ones with autism and the naughty ones and the chunky ones and the shy ones and the loud ones and the so-far-behind ones. — Glennon Doyle Melton

What my friends didn't know about me and I didn't know about Amma is that people who are hurting don't need Avoiders, Protectors, or Fixers. What we need are patient, loving witnesses. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpless vigil to our pain. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Forgiveness and grace are like oxygen: we can't offer it to others unless we put our masks on first. — Glennon Doyle Melton

There is no way to overpower, outrun, or outsmart the mad dog of hopelessness because it's simply more vicious than I. The only thing to do is let it attack, go limp in its jaws, and be shaken. But I notice one promising pattern. If I play dead, it will eventually let me go. I start thinking of the dog of hopelessness as an obstacle that will reappear on every curve of the spiral staircase. He'll always be there waiting and snarling, but with every go-round, I'll be more confident and less fearful. Eventually, I'll learn the tricks that will allow me to breeze right past him. But the mad dog of hopelessness will always be there. My spiral staircase of progress means that my pain will be both behind me and in front of me, every damn day. I'll never be "over it," but I vow to be stronger each time I face it. Maybe the pain won't change, but I will. I keep climbing. — Glennon Doyle Melton

It strikes me that I need to throw out the dictionary the world gave me about what it means to be a mother, a wife, a person of faith, an artist, and a woman and write my own. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Stop making parenthood harder by pretending it's not hard. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I just need to know if you can really know me and still love me, — Glennon Doyle Melton

No woman on earth doesn't give a fuck - no woman is that cool - she's just hidden her fire. Likely, it's burning her up. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Most of the magic in my life has happened after my heart has been shattered. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Life is brutal, but it's also beautiful. Life is Brutiful. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love. There on the bed, in her pigtails and pain, my daughter was me - the little girl I once was, the woman I am now, still struggling to answer the questions: How can I be expansive and free and still be loved? Am I going to be a lady or am I going to be fully human? Do I trust the unfolding and continue to grow, or do I shut all of this down so I fit? — Glennon Doyle Melton

When one is burying a dream, one might as well plant another dream. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Grace makes no disclaimer. It's true for all or none. — Glennon Doyle Melton

We talked about how impossible it is to read minds and hearts and what a relief it is to hear what the person you love needs and learn how to give it. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I know my name now. Love Warrior. I came from Love and I am Love and I will return to Love. Love casts out fear. A woman who has recovered her true identity as a Love Warrior is the most powerful force on earth. All the darkness and shame and pain in the world can't defeat her. — Glennon Doyle Melton

These things don't fill me completely, but they remind me that it is not my job to fill myself. It's just my job to notice my emptiness and find graceful ways to live as a broken, unfilled human - and maybe to help myself and others feel a teeny bit better. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Life is hard - not because we're doing it wrong, just because it's hard. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Addiction is just a little hiding place where sensitive people can go so we don't have to be touched by love or pain. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I have met my self and I am going to care for her fiercely. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I think I love my people more than normal people love their people. My love is so overwhelming and terrifying and uncomfortable and complicated that I need to hide from it. Life and love simply ask too much of me. Everything hurts. I don't know how peple can just let it all hurt so much. I am just not up for all this hurting. I have to do whatever it takes not to feel the hurt. But what i have to do to avoid the hurt for myself hurts everyone else. My survival means I have to keep harming my people. But it is not because I don't love them, it is because I love them too much. All I can say is "I do love you," but it sounds weak, like a like, and their faces don't soften when they hear it. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I don't want to take anything to the grave. I want to die used up and emptied out. I don't want to carry around anything that I don't have to. I want to travel light. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I can only speak from my personal experience, but I've been married for ten years and barely any gay people have tried to break up my marriage. I say barely any because that Nate Berkus is a little shady. I am defenseless against his cuteness and eye for accessories. He is always convincing me to buy beautiful trinkets with our grocery money, and this drives your sweet father a bit nuts. So you might want to keep your eye on Berkus. But with the exception of him, I'm fairly certain that the only threats to your father's and my marriage are our pride, insecurity, anger, and wanderlust. Do not be afraid of people who seem different from you, baby. Different always turns out to be an illusion. Look hard. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Recovery is an unbecoming. My healing has been a peeling away of costume after cstume until here I am, still and naked before God, stripped down to my real identity. — Glennon Doyle Melton

If I want to know: Is there anyone on earth who won't betray me? I must answer myself: Yes. Look in the mirror. She won't betray you. So — Glennon Doyle Melton

sometimes we get confused and believe that our gift must bring us money or success or fame. — Glennon Doyle Melton

In all my close friendships, words are the bricks I use to build bridges. To know someone I need to hear her, and to feel known, I need to be heard by her. The process of knowing and loving another person happens for me through conversation. I reveal something to help my friend understand me, she responds in a way that assures me she values my revelation, and then she adds something to help me understand her. This back-and-forth is repeated again and again as we go deeper into each other's hearts, minds, pasts, and dreams. Eventually, a friendship is built - a solid, sheltering structure that exists in the space between us - a space outside of ourselves that we can climb deep into. There is her, there is me, and then there is our friendship - this bridge we've built together. — Glennon Doyle Melton

They look because she's lovely but they stare because she is love. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I learned that in these disasters, all we can do is tell our In Case of Emergencies that their grief is real, and if it lasts forever, then we will grieve with them forever.
As far as I was able to tell during those two years, there was nothing else worth saying. It was not going to be all right, ever. Everything doesn't happen for a decent reason. I was Sister's In Case of Emergency and I couldn't fix her emergency. I couldn't do anything at all except feed her, hold her when she cried, pray angry prayers, keep showing up, and hope that time and my home and presence would offer healing. — Glennon Doyle Melton

His forgetfulness feels like carelessness, and his carelessness feels like rejection. — Glennon Doyle Melton

The music is a safe place to practice being human. In the span of one song I can feel it all, let it all come - joy and hope and terror and rage and love - and then let it pass. The song always ends. I survive every time. This is how I know I'm getting better: I become able to survive the beauty of music. I have accepted another one of life's dangerous invitations: the invitation to feel. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Be critical, fine, that's fair. But don't be cruel. Every damn one of us knows the difference.
If you are not kind on the internet, then you're not kind. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I think God puts people in our lives as gifts to us. The children in your class this year, they are some of God's gifts to you. So please treat each one like a gift from God. Every single one. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Thought a lot about how beautiful and powerful courage and faith are when they are found together. — Glennon Doyle Melton

On the way out I stare at the vodka, whiskey, and rum bottles on the counter and I think, There I am. My personality, my courage, and my sense of humor are trapped inside those bottles and I can't get to them. I am not in here, I am in there. What is the point of getting sober if I don't even like my sober self? — Glennon Doyle Melton

This is the difference between God and booze. God requires something of us. The booze numbs the pain but God insists on nothing short of healing. God deals only with truth and the truth will set you free, but it will hurt so badly first. Sobriety will be like walking toward my own crucifixion. that what it will take though. That's what it will take to rise. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Happiness is low expectations paired with a short-term memory problem. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Teamwork. Love takes teamwork, I think. — Glennon Doyle Melton

When her pain is fresh and new, let her have it. Don't try to take it away. Forgive yourself for not having that power. Grief and pain are like joy and peace; they are not things we should try to snatch from each other. They're sacred. they are part of each person's journey. All we can do is offer relief from this fear: I am all alone. That's the one fear you can alleviate. — Glennon Doyle Melton

We either allow ourselves to feel the burn of our own pain or someone we love gets burned by it. — Glennon Doyle Melton

My whole life is an apology, and that hasn't made a damn thing better. — Glennon Doyle Melton

If I want my world to be less vicious, then I must become more gentle. If I want my children to embrace other children for who they are, to treat other children with the dignity and respect every child of God deserves, then I had better treat other adults the same way. And I better make sure that my children know beyond a shadow of a doubt that in God's and their father's and my eyes, they are okay. They are loved as they are. Without a single unless. Because the kids who bully are those who are afraid that a secret part of themselves is not okay. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I just want us to remember than when we became parents, we didn't change species. We're still humans. I mean, we're bad-ass humans, for sure, but humans nonetheless. We make mistakes, all day, and that's good. We want our children to see that. We want them to learn how to handle mistakes because that's an important thing to learn. We expect to make mistakes, we say we're sorry, we forgive ourselves, we shrug and smile, and we try again.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Reading is my inhale and writing is my exhale. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I love God, whoever he is, and I'd really like to get closer to him. I've been thinking about how one of the simplest ways to get close to a woman is to be good to her children. To be kind and gentle and to pay close attention to the things that make them special. To try to see her children the way she sees her children. And how God made us in his image. How he is the mother and father of all of us. So I wonder if that would be the best way to get closer to him too. By being kind and gentle to his children and noticing all of the things that make them special. So many of us spend our time trying to find God in books, but maybe the simplest way to God is directly through the hearts of his children. — Glennon Doyle Melton

That's the thing about becoming a family: you gotta melt. You have to keep melting into each other until you become something entirely new. The only constant family rule is that everyone has to keep showing up. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Persevere. Bear with great patience each other's infirmities of body or behavior. And when the thorns of contention arise, daily forgive, and be ready to accept forgiveness. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Chase's eyes still glistened while a tiny smile emerged like a hesitant rainbow. This might be his best look. And it is my favorite moment in life. When you realize, Wow, this is bad. Really, really bad. But we're still here. We're gonna make it through. Not over or under or around, but through. And look, we're even going to smile again. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I'm not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain that now, when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, 'For the same reason I laugh so often--because I'm paying attention.' I tell them that we can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved. We must decide. — Glennon Doyle Melton

It strikes me that it's always religious people who are most surprised by grace. — Glennon Doyle Melton

But I drink differently than they do. They drink to take the edge off. I drink to disappear. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Let's begin at the beginning. It's our only choice, it turns out. — Glennon Doyle Melton

If you feel something calling you to dance or write or paint or sing, please refuse to worry about whether you're good enough. Just do it. Be generous. Offer a gift to the world that no one else can offer: yourself. — Glennon Doyle Melton

She is trying to be brave, but no one knows what brave looks like inside this particular moment. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Chase, we don't believe that homosexuality is a sin. The Bible was inspired by God, but it was written, translated, and interpreted by imperfect people just like us. This means that the passing of this sacred scripture from generation to generation and from culture to culture has been a bit like the "telephone game" you play at school. After thousands of years, it's impossible to judge the original spirit of some scripture. We believe that when in doubt, mercy triumphs judgment. So your parents are Christians who study and pray and then carefully choose what we follow in the Bible, based on whether or not it matches our understanding of Jesus's overall message. — Glennon Doyle Melton

We can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Loving people and animals makes us stronger in the right ways and weaker in the right ways. Even if animals and people leave, even if they die, they leave us better. So we keep loving, even though we might lose, because loving teaches us and changes us. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Let's be Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus's children, Scout and Jem, carefully watch their father's behavior as the house next door to theirs burns to the ground. As the fire creeps closer and closer to the Finches' home, Atticus appears so calm that Scout and Jem finally decide that "it ain't time to worry yet." We need to be Atticus. Hands in our pockets. Calm. Believing. So that our children will look at us and even with a fire raging in front of them, they'll say, "Huh. Guess it's not time to worry yet. — Glennon Doyle Melton

He is human. I hadn't wanted him to be human. I had wanted him to be perfect and golden - steady and solid, simple and strong - so that I could be messy, complicated, and weak. But we are each all of those things. — Glennon Doyle Melton

that we are just scattered pieces of the same puzzle, so when we hurt each other, we hurt ourselves. — Glennon Doyle Melton

We begin to understand that to coparent is to one day look up and notice that you are on a roller coaster with another human being. You are in the same car, strapped down side by side and you can never, ever get off. There will never be another moment in your lives when your hearts don't rise and fall together, when your minds don't race and panic together, when your stomachs don't churn in tandem, when you stop seeing huge hills emerge in the distance and simultaneously grab the side of the car and hold on tight. No one except for the one strapped down beside you will ever understand the particular thrills and terrors of your ride. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Having something to say and no one to hear it is so lonely. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Defrosting is excruciatingly painful. You have been numb for so long. As feeling comes back to your soul, you start to tingle, and it's uncomfortable and strange. But then the tingles start feeling like daggers. Sadness, loss, fear, anger, anxiety - all of these things that you have been numbing with the booze - you feel them for the first time. And it's horrific at first, to tell you the damn truth. But welcoming the pain and refusing to escape from it is the only way to recovery. You can't go around it, you can't go over it, you have to — Glennon Doyle Melton

God approaches us in the disguise of other people. — Glennon Doyle Melton

We need to be Atticus. Hands in our pockets. Calm. Believing. So that our children will look at us and even with a fire raging in front of them, they'll say, "Huh. Guess it's not time to worry yet." Then we'll watch carefully. We'll just watch and wait and believe until God nods and says, "It's time. Tear open that gift, Mama. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Women who are concerned with being pretty think about what they look like, but women who are concerned with being beautiful think about what they are looking at. They are taking it all in. They are taking in the whole beautiful world and making all that beauty theirs to give away to others. — Glennon Doyle Melton

My daughter and I pay attention. We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be. Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Self-forgiveness. It's more like a constant attitude. It's just being hopeful. It's refusing to hold your breath. It's loving yourself enough to offer yourself a million more tries. It's what we want our kids to do every day for their whole lives, right? We want them to embrace being human instead of fighting against it. We want them to offer themselves grace. Forgiveness and grace are like oxygen: we can't offer it to others unless we put our masks on first. We have to put our grace masks on and breathe in deep. — Glennon Doyle Melton

The messiest parts of our lives are also the most beautiful parts of our lives. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Sister, who needs an umbrella when you are the whole sky?" All — Glennon Doyle Melton

You are my beloved! I made you and everything you have ever been or are or will become is already approved. Nothing you can ever do will make me love you more, and nothing you can ever do will make me love you less. That is finished. So stop hiding, stop waiting, and come now! Just get up and dance with me! — Glennon Doyle Melton

God created woman as a Warrior. I think about the tragedies the women in my life have faced. How every time a child gets sick or a man leaves or a parent dies or a community crumbles, the women are the ones who carry on, who do what must be done for their people in the midst of their own pain. While those around them fall away, the women hold the sick and nurse the weak, put food on the table, carry their families' sadness and anger and love and hope. They keep showing up for their lives and their people with the odds stacked against them and the weight of the world on their shoulders. They never stop singing songs of truth, love, and redemption in the face of hopelessness. They are inexhaustible, ferocious, relentless cocreators with God, and they make beautiful worlds out of nothing. Have women been the Warriors all along? — Glennon Doyle Melton

You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it's hard. Not because you're doing it wrong, but because it hurts for everybody. Don't avoid the pain. You need it. It's meant for you. Be still with it, let it come, let it go, let it leave you wtih the fuel you'll burn to get your work done on this earth. — Glennon Doyle Melton

There are only two lives we might live: our dream or our destiny. Sometimes they are one in the same, and sometimes they're not. Often our dreams are just a path to our destinies. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Books are how I learned to disappear, to live in a world other than the uncomfortable physical one. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Our story is the only thing we have that is completely our own. A person who steals it and uses it to entertain is the worst kind of thief. Then — Glennon Doyle Melton

The God I decide to believe in is the God of the bathroom floor. A God of scandalously low expectations. A God who smiles down at a drunk on the floor, wasted and afraid, and says, There you are. I've been waiting. Are you ready to make something beautiful with me? I look at the blue cross and decide I will let it be. I will stop deeming myself unworthy of invitations and trust the inviter. I will test out the ridiculous, nonsensical possibility that somehow, in some way I can't yet see, I will rise to meet this call. Yes, — Glennon Doyle Melton

Mutual surrender, maybe that's an act of love. Surrendering to this thing that's bigger than we are: this love, this pain. The courage to surrender comes from knowing that the love and pain will almost kill us, but not quite. — Glennon Doyle Melton

A heart expands exactly as much as her owner allows. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I don't believe in advice. Everybody has the answers right inside her, since we're all made up of the same amount of God. So when a friend says, I need some advice, I switch it to, I need some love, and I try to offer that. — Glennon Doyle Melton

done everything backward. She'd done everything, forever, by the book. The right way. Until then, I'd only learned this about grace: sometimes, like in my case, you get blessed for no reason. You get something wonderful that you don't deserve. But on that day, I learned that the flip side is also true: sometimes you get screwed for no reason. You get something awful that you never, ever deserved. It all slips away. You cannot earn yourself an easy life or even a fair one. Soon — Glennon Doyle Melton

When you write your truth, it is a love offering to the world because it helps us feel braver and less alone. — Glennon Doyle Melton

To arrive inside the moment in which you are supposed to feel more connected than at any other moment of your life and still feel lonely is utterly terrifying. It is the most lonely you can possibly feel. I — Glennon Doyle Melton

crap. I do not know why this is my solution, but when I arrive — Glennon Doyle Melton

You have to be known to be loved, and none of these waving people knows me. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Peace isnt the absence of distraction or annoyance or pain. Its finding Me, finding peace and calm, in the midst of those distractions and annoyances and pains. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Daughters-in-law, notice the beauty of the rug that your mother-in-law spent a lifetime weaving. Remember that her pattern is mostly firmly established-no need to suggest improvements. Be kinder than necessary, being mindful that the piece of art it took her a lifetime to weave-her masterpiece-she gave to you to keep you warm at night. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I'm not big on advice, mainly because most days I learn what an idiot I was yesterday. — Glennon Doyle Melton