“My queerness isn’t just a matter of who I sleep with, bigger than sexuality, a subversive reclamation of life outside of the lines” GaySexualityLgbtqQueerLesbianLgbtqiaQueernessQueer Quotes Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“Be gentle. Pay attention. Offer purposeful healing. Seek Equilibrium. Unfreeze, slowly. Stretch yourself out into the world. Let your eyes calibrate to this new light and notice how it caresses the lines and curves and soft and hard of you. Allow your mouth to twist and stumble around new shapes. Be so very sensory. Notice everything. From every angle. The way your bones feel. The way you orient to space and time. Invite your whole being into this new way of living, into the totality and wholeness of it. Let it be strange and uncomfortable and painful and stiff. Let it be magical and novel and unfamiliar and entirely wonderful. Follow the whispers where they lead.” BodySensesGentleEmbodimentWild HeartJeanette LeblancEmbodied Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“But I'm not a writer..." How many times have you thought that? How many times have you said it out loud? How many times have you read a beautifully worded book or a poem or an essay or a social media post and felt it take your breath away? Felt that yearning inside of you, that longing to do that or learn that or become that thing...the one that would let you find the words to share your story like that. If only you were brave enough. If only you were wise enough. If only you had all the right words. If only you were talented. If only you could speak the truth without being judged. If only you could write like her or him or them. If only you were a writer... Guess what. You are. You are a writer - and I promise you this. If you were not a writer you wouldn't be here. You are a writer because words dance in your brain and itch the tips of your fingers - begging you to pick up the pen or click the keyboard. Because a phrase on a page or the lyric of a song can steal your breath and remind you of all lines that live in your soul that long for release. Because you are pulled, again and again, and again to story. To the real and raw and the fantastically make-believe. You are a writer because of your willingness to stare into the void and face the demons and weave the beauty of the world around you into words. And even if those words don't ever make it to a page, they live inside of you. Because you couldn't stop, even if you wanted to. And you don't want to. Because the words are like your breath and the story - your story - that is the air. And the magic that happens when we come together to make stories - well, that's the universe. So the next time you're tempted to let that phrase or any other like it - slip into your brain or from your lips - shut that shit down. Immediately. You are a writer. Do you hear me? You said yes. You are here. You are showing up at the page and sitting in front of the screen. You are welcoming the muse. You are facing the fear. And you are writing. You are a writer. And that's the beginning and end of everything. Now, stop arguing with me, and go write already.” Finding Your VoiceOvercoming Self DoubtBecoming A WriterCreative Self ExpressionEmbracing The Writer WithinFacing Fear As A WriterImposter Syndrome In WritingWriter S JourneyWriting As IdentityWriting With Confidence Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“Your story is where the revolution begins.” Writing QuotesQuotes For WritersPower Of StoryWriting To HealOwn Your StoryWriting As TherapyWriting Your StoryHealing Through StorytellingPersonal RevolutionTransformational Writing Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“Stay more loyal to your own life (and the day by day living of it) than you are to the grief of what has been left behind.” Emotional HealingLiving In The PresentLetting Go Of The PastLiving In The NowLiving With PurposeMindfulness In Everyday LifeMoving On From GriefOvercoming LossPersonal Growth And HealingSelf Care And Healing Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“I spent a lot of time in the past year trying to work out the trick of writing a true story about love. I think I may have been coming at the whole thing a little sideways. You see, it’s awfully hard to live a true love story when you’re focusing your attention on the love story you want to write.” LoveLove QuotesLove StoryWriters On WritingWriting ProcessQuotes About LoveLove StoriesWriting Love Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“Here's the crazy thing about light. It can be flat and dull, casting nothing into shadow and throwing little into relief. Everything is illuminated exactly the same; nothing to entice or call you forward. Any photographer knows that you can take a million technically perfect photos in light like that—perfect but lacking magic. But all it takes is one tiny, almost imperceptible shift, and suddenly everything dances and turns into prisms of color and lines that beckon and move and sing. You don’t have to travel an inch. No doing or undoing. Just the slightest shift (of position, of perspective, of power) and everything is transformed. Light like that asks us to remember that it’s all magic, one way or another, isn’t it? We just have to be willing to spin until we catch it, hold it as long as it wishes to be held, and then release and watch it dance away. And then we shift and shift and shift again. We can’t hold anything, not really, only learn to dance with it while it is ours to have and know. But there is one thing I know in this life, I’ll never stop chasing the shift. I’ll never stop looking for new ways to see. I’ll never stop seeking the light.” Perspective ShiftEmbracing ImpermanenceChasing The LightDance With LifeFinding Beauty In Small ShiftsIllumination And ChangeMagic Of LightSeeing DifferentlySeeking New PerspectivesTransformative Moments Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“Queerness is reclamation. It is powerful and subversive and fierce and undeniably holy. Yes. It is. But to have a lived experience of queerness is also to hold an intimate knowledge of othering. It is to hold rejection, fear, or violence in your body - whether historical or actual or potential - at all times because of nothing more than who the soft animal of our good queer bodies bends toward loving.” Queer ResilienceHistorical Trauma And QueernessLiving Queer ExperiencesOthering And QueernessQueer Bodies And LoveQueer Identity And PowerQueer StrengthQueerness And ReclamationRejection And Fear In QueernessSubversive Identity Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“I’m mesmerized by lipstick prints on coffee cups. By the lines of lips against white pottery. By the color chosen by the woman who sat and sipped and lived life. By the mark she leaves behind. Some people read tea leaves, and others can tell your future through the lines on your palm. I think I’d like to read lipstick marks on coffee mugs. To learn how to differentiate yearning from satiation. To know the curve of deep-rooted joy or the line of bottomless grief. To be able to say this deep blue-red you chose and how firmly you planted your lips, speaks of love on the horizon. But, darling, you must be sure to stand in your own truth. That barely-there nude that circles the entire rim? You are exploding into lightness and possibilities beyond what you currently know. The way the gloss only shows when the light hits it, and the coffee has sloshed all over the saucer? People need to take the time to see you whole but my god, you’re glorious and messy and wonderful and free. The deep purple bruise was almost etched in a single spot, and most of the cup left unconsumed. Oh, love. Let me hold the depth of your ache. It is true. He’s not coming back. I know you already know this, but do you also know this is not the end? Love. This is not the end. I imagine that I can know entire stories by these marks on discarded mugs. I imagine that I know something intimate and true about the woman who left them. I imagine that I could take those mugs home one day, and an entire novel worth of characters would pour out, just like that.” LipstickEmotional ExpressionUnspoken EmotionsCoffee CupsInvisible StoriesPersonal Imprints And MeaningReading Emotions Through SignsSigns Of Love And LossStories In Small DetailsSymbolism Of Everyday Objects Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“Magic isn’t about make-believe, after all. It’s just about suspending your own disbelief sufficiently to see the wonder that exists inside each and every moment of reality.” MagicDisbeliefMagical RealismMagicalMagic RealismMagic QuotesSpell CastingQuotes About Magic Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“So, you want us to stop saying gay. Want to remove the right to acknowledge the truth of our bodies and hearts and eradicate the language that names us As if this will somehow keep you safe from our existence As if you can see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil us into oblivion. It was you who birthed us into a legacy of code makers and breakers. Humans who took their language underground. Cast spells and had wordless conversations with our ancestors Who gifted us new ways to speak in the open air. We painted pink triangles on the walls of The underground bomb shelters you built to bury us alive Left a trail of glitter pointing to the inborn light in our chests So the ones who came looking for us would know how we lived. We stole back the vernacular you created to hide us back from the tips of your forked tongues Alchemized the sounds that twisted your mouth into symbols of reclamation Used your vilification to dig ourselves out of the closets you constructed around us Made our way blazing and victorious into the sun. When AIDS devastated an entire glittering generation We crafted a whispered language of the isolated hospital room and empty funeral That can only be heard by bodies That have been asked to hold a loss too deep to name. When Matthew Shephard's bloody and broken body Was found tied to that barbed wire fence, the only clean part of his skin the trails of his desperate tears We twisted from the ethers an entirely new way to name collective grief and fear, one far too infinite to hold alone It has always been our tenacious together than holds us. Drive us underground We will always surface Singing words you can never own Because don’t have the range to hear them. Go ahead, take away our words, We will birth a whole new language You’ve been sending your armies for us since the beginning of time But we were born for battle. You wonder why we are still here? You made us this strong. You think getting rid of a word will silence us? You’d have to ban them all.” Fighting Lgbtq ErasureLgbtq RightsBanning Gay In SchoolsCensorship Of Queer LanguageDon T Say GayErasure Of Queer IdentitiesLgbtq CensorshipProtecting Lgbtq ExpressionQueer Language BanQueer Resistance To Censorship Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon and there is nobody else to hear you It is the darkest night you’ve ever lived through You’ve lived through. You’ve lived. Do you hear me? You live. You make it. You survive.” LifeHurtSurvivalLiveSurvivorWild HeartJeanette LeblancDarkest Night Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“We are here to love hard and true. Here to give ourselves over to the rush and bliss of it all. Here to offer our patchwork hearts over and over again. Here to feel and fall and hurt and bleed. Here to say yes and to choose wholeness and to break anyway and to do it all again.” LoveWholeHurtFeelYesHereWild HeartJeanette Leblanc Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“I know the hard ground and the taste of the salt water I’m made of and the way even getting out of bed feels impossible some days. I know how some moments there’s not even enough air. I know the desperate and the bargains you want to make with the universe and every last prayer you’ve prayed to gods you don’t even believe in. But stupid? No, love. Not stupid. Not you. You are infinitely, impossibly, beautifully human.” PainHurtHumanDesperationBargainingGroundWild HeartJeanette LeblancBeautifully Human Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
“The steadfast practice of being with what is real is one of the truest ways I have come to understand the nature of reverence.” RealityReverenceReverence For LifeQuotes About RealityReverence QuotesQuotes About Reverence Author:Jeanette LeBlanc