I know, now, without a doubt that the true source of happiness, self-worth, and authentic beauty doesn't come from the outside. Women are constantly being persuaded to want something unachievable, to look younger or thinner and above all to fit in because being different
is too painful and embarrassing.
I have accepted myself in a world that does not accept me, because I have learned - and more than any of the lessons of my accident, this is the one I wish I could teach everybody - that our hearts matter most. Your heart matters most, so be gentler and more patient with yourself, and their hearts matter most, too, so be kinder and more compassionate to others.
-taken from Stephanie Nielson, Heaven is Here
No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself.
~ Attributed to Rabbi Sofer
"...If we are to search for real light and eternal certainties, we have to pray as the ancients prayed. We are women now, not children, and we are expected to pray with maturity. The words most often used to describe urgent, prayerful labor are wrestle, plead, cry, and hunger. In some sense, prayer may be the hardest work we ever will engage in, and perhaps it should be." --Patricia Holland
“No pain that we suffer,
no trial that we experience is wasted.
It ministers to our education, to the development
of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude, and humility.
All that we suffer and all that we endure,
especially when we endure it patiently,
builds up our characters, purifies our hearts,
expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable,
more worthy to be called the children of God…
and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation,
that we gain the education that we came here to acquire
and which will make us more like our Father in heaven.”
-Orson F. Whitney
We must be so careful in speaking to a child. What we say or don’t say, how we say it and when is so very, very important in shaping a child’s view of himself or herself. But it is even more important in shaping that child’s faith in us and their faith in God. Be constructive in your comments to a child—always. Never tell them, even in whimsy, that they are fat or dumb or lazy or homely. You would never do that maliciously, but they remember and may struggle for years trying to forget—and to forgive. And try not to compare your children, even if you think you are skillful at it. You may say most positively that “Susan is pretty and Sandra is bright,” but all Susan will remember is that she isn’t bright and Sandra that she isn’t pretty. Praise each child individually for what that child is, and help him or her escape our culture’s obsession with comparing, competing, and never feeling we are “enough.”
- Jeffery R. Holland
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"Every home has both body and spirit. You may have a beautiful house with all the decorations that modern art can give or wealth bestow. You may have all the outward forms that will please the eye and yet not have a home. It is not home without love. It may be a hovel, a log hut, a tent, a wickiup...if you have the right spirit within, the true love of Christ, and love for one another...you have the true life of the home that Latter-Day Saints build and which they are striving to establish." ~David O. McKay
No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself.
~ Attributed to Rabbi Sofer
Ralph Waldo Emerson