Two sea otters that have each other’s back.
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This tumblr made me think about recent quotes from all across the web that are reflections on love and relationships — in all their complexity and forms. To me, at its base level, love is simply about having each other’s back. Others have opined even further on self-love, love and relationships, love and career, and love and sisterhood. So here goes some notable quotables:
“We should be seeing intelligent people (whether hetero-normative or otherwise) coming together to exemplify for the BROADER community what strong relationships can build when individuals who focus on the right things find one another.” Rodney’s (aka Amir Demeke) response to the Mr. Misogyny, Enough is Enough article.
“Instead of feeling the usual “why me?” after a romantic relationship ends, [warning this will sound weird], I keep growing from this experience. Oddly enough, the fact that I was able to love that deeply, let someone break down each and every one of my walls, and trust that for the first time in my life I had met my match—someone who could take care of me the same way I could take care of them—actually gave me incredible hope. The realization that I had the capacity to experience a love like that actually leads me believe that if I found it once, I will find it again.” – Crunkista of the Crunk Feminist Collective in “There is only love”
Never mind,I’ll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don’t forget me, I beg
I remember you said,
“Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead,”
The Singer Adele in “Someone Like You”
“Over the next three-and-a-half hours I read Dr. Seuss aloud, walked up and down (and up and down) the single aisle of a 757, first with a 3-year-old in a bulky halo, then with a 2-year-old; I amused them with hand puppets, changed diapers, doled out Goldfish crackers and bottles, and channeled every kind stranger who had done the same for me over the dozens of flights I had taken alone with my kids.” – Laura Wilkinson Stinson in the NYT Modern Love Column on showing some sisterly love to a fellow single mom traveler on Christmas day.
“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers… As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” Steve Jobs on love in partnership and love for career in the widely circulated Stanford Commencement Address
“When you become president, one thing that happens overnight is that you and everyone you love get a bunch of new nicknames. I was already pretty used to this. But “FLOTUS,” short for First Lady of the United States, is really something else… This fall, Michelle and I will have been married 20 years. The next 10 months will be harder than any we’ve experienced together, and I couldn’t do it without her.” – Barack Obama in a campaign e-mail rallying folks to sign his beloved’s birthday card.
Heartbreak opens on to the sunrise
For even breaking is opening
And I am broken
I am open
See the love shine in through my cracks
See the light shine out through me
My spirit takes journey
My spirit takes flight
And I am not running
I am choosing
I am broken
I am broken open
Breaking is freeing
Broken is freedom
I am not broken – I am free.
- Alike from Pariah
“A lot of people say you’re going to be lonely. No, you will adjust,” Loni Love on the single life in the Washington Post in “Survey Paints Portrait of Black Women in America”
“I am not the marrying kind… if we [referring to Graham] were married, by now we would be divorced.” Oprah Winfrey told a Hollywood Reporter
“The most power I have gained from my single life is in the friendships I have with other women that have flourished in a non-competitive environment where we don’t prioritize our romantic relationships. Building powerful communities is the only way to keep us from being isolated in a world that wants to portray us as failures, to make us feel bad about our success, or to shame us for having pride. And since single women have nurtured their communities, we have people who take care of us. We laugh and enjoy our lives, go on vacations with friends, yes, often as a result of love or heartbreak, but for other reasons as well. Single women can’t maintain their lifestyles alone, and when we go about it the right way, we don’t have to.” From the book Outdated by Samhita Mukhopadhyay
