“For all my days, I have been making up to the world for how challenging I am, how questioning I am, how strong and smart and passionate I am, how unwilling I am to accept systems and processes and values just because that's the way it's been done and been seen, considered especially challenging as a female, especially in a somewhat younger time (a/k/a less open to challenges)-- when I, too, was younger (a/k/a what does she know?). There I was, challenging, questioning, but also trying to make up to the world for it, always to be--show--prove that I'm not didactic, intransigent, inflexible, that my passion is not dogma, but a malleable creative force informed by sensory, intellectual, and emotional input... For all my days, I have been making up to the world for how challenging I am. But that has been as good for me as it has thwarted me, it has grown me, shaped me, honed me” PassionStrongForceGrowthCreativitySmartDogmaChallengeProfessionally Unreasonable Author:Shellen Lubin
“Most of us have both ways that we are privileged and ways that we are discounted. I am a woman, and women have historically not owned their own lives, having once been the property of fathers and husbands, the acclaim and remuneration for their finest work given to others, and still evolving from that reality. As a white woman/mother/artist from a middle class family in the twentieth century? I have lived a life of such privilege, with so much support provided me. I have lived a life of such deprivation of opportunity and lack of recognition. Sometimes my head spins from the contradictory co-existing reality of it... How have you had privilege in your life? How can you do better for those who have not?” WomenGrowthHistoryPrivilegeAltruismSelflessnessExploitation Contradiction Author:Shellen Lubin
“As much as evil and mercenary selfishness never fail to rear their ugly heads-- sowing destruction in all directions-- so, too, do love and beauty never fail to emerge from the debris. Amid the chaos, there is always something that grows.” LoveEvilGrowthBeautyDestructionChaos Author:Shellen Lubin
“Love and work. Work and love. Whatever it is we do, whoever it is we love, hopefully we make something better with it all-- our lives, our community, our country, the world.” WorldLoveLifeCountryHopeGrowthCommunityWorkGratitudeImprovement Author:Shellen Lubin
“Any move you make Moves you. Whether craved or feared. Any change changes you.” FearGrowthChangeProgressMovementAdaptationCravingMake A Move Author:Shellen Lubin
“We are human, and, being human, we are imperfect creatures. Through the process of injury, self-examination, and amends, we grow. We all grow.” ProcessGrowthHumanInjuryImperfectionSelf ReflectionHuman BeingFuture Forgiveness Author:Shellen Lubin
“It's going to take us all having a strong constitution to withstand the necessary pressures on our constitution to change while the ideals and principles at the heart of it hold. Can we do it? We shall see. But we won't have much of a democracy any other way.” GrowthChangePrinciplesDemocracyEvolutionFutureIdealsConstitutionPressureA Strong Constitution Author:Shellen Lubin
“We must take advantage of those moments of wonder-- those moments that stir up the creative juices, that foster belief and faith-- to re-imagine what is possible in ourselves, in our lives, in our world. And then we must make use of all that beautiful renewed energy, all that hope and determination-- to move, to effect change.” FaithHopeBeliefGrowthChangeWonderBeautyCreativityPossibilitiesOpen To The Possibilities Author:Shellen Lubin
“This is a critical year--maybe the last critical year if we get this wrong--when we are all challenged to recognize how we have benefitted and continue to benefit from unearned privilege (as well as how we have been denied and disrespected, even in ways that we have perceived as privilege, or as our right). We all must be willing to look, to acknowledge, to own the complex reality which is our history, our country, our lives. It is not enough to go to a house of prayer and ask God for forgiveness. It is not enough that we forgive each other, not enough to forgive ourselves. We must extend effort to repair damage in which we have participated and/or from which we have received benefit... We must do differently moving forward.” AmericaGrowthChangePrivilegeHealComplexityChallengeAtonementReap What You SowYom Kippur Author:Shellen Lubin
“Trying to think. Thinking beyond. Going wide... Going deep... Going away, doing something else... Coming back, thinking more.” ThinkingProcessGrowthChangeCommitmentDeepThinking Through Author:Shellen Lubin
“I remember just after 9/11/2001 people were putting up American flags-- stand with America against its enemies was the prevailing feeling-- and all I could think was "that's the feeling that got us here." It seemed to me that empathy for our ostensible enemies was the only way we could move forward to something better. I know that's true now.” WisdomAmericaGrowthProgressPerspectiveEvolutionEmpathyEnemies9 11On Mourning Author:Shellen Lubin
“We are imperfect creatures. Imperfection breeds empathy and understanding. Empathy and understanding breed forgiveness. Forgiveness breeds love. And we all need more love in our lives.” LoveUnderstandingGrowthEmpathyForgivenessImperfectionFuture Forgiveness Author:Shellen Lubin
“I am continually surprised by who people are and what they have been through when you can be in a place and a time where and when they are open to sharing stories.” LifeGrowthJourneyIdentityAdversitySurpriseStorytellingVulnerabilityOpenSharing Stories Author:Shellen Lubin
“Try. Fail. Fall. Get up. Fail again. Learn something. Get up again. Try again. Fail again. Learn more. Get back up Again Again.” FallGrowthFailureResilienceLearnRepetitionTryRepeatGet Up Again Author:Shellen Lubin
“There are all kinds of ignorance that are insidious. Most involve not asking the right questions, or not questioning the assumptions in the questions themselves. We can do better.” GrowthKnowledgePowerIgnoranceEvolutionAssumptionQuestionsQuestionAssumptionsThe Virtue Of Ignorance Author:Shellen Lubin
“This has been a time of trying to figure out: how much time do we spend maintaining the plans and systems we have created for ourselves, tying up the loose ends of the plans we've completed or abandoned, and imagining and making plans for what we want and need in days to come?... All have promise. All have residue. All have costs. All have benefits.” PastTimeGrowthPlansPromiseFutureCostPresentBenefitLong Term Plan Author:Shellen Lubin
“There are so many ways to relieve the anxiety, and we cannot function if we don't find one of those ways, one that distracts, relieves, and leaves you better off than before not worse, and self-loathing... We know not what storms are coming.” GrowthHealingSelf LoveAnxietyMental HealthStormReliefSelf CareAnxious Times Author:Shellen Lubin
“Do something again and again, you build a practice, whether it is a practice of celebration or destruction of glorious simplicity or of simplicity that numbs, of complexity that challenges and grows you, or complexity that stultifies.” GrowthPracticeDestructionSimplicityComplexityLittle ThingsCelebrationRepetitionBig ThingsChallenge Author:Shellen Lubin
“Even in and out and in and out of isolation, We must find ways to choose hope, To choose to go on, To choose to make things, To choose to make things better, To choose Life. L'Shana Tovah.” LifeHopeGrowthSurvivalImprovementChoiceIsolationAutonomyChoose Life Author:Shellen Lubin
“We ourselves are as much a result of the work we do as the product of that work will ever be.” GrowthSelf LoveHonorBenefitsLaborSeasonsBack To School Author:Shellen Lubin
“Take these sunflower seeds and put them in your pockets' said one Ukrainian woman to a Russian soldier on her street, 'At least when you die, something will grow.' Others ask soldiers, 'How do you explain to your mother why you are here?' The soldiers are disheartened, no shock and awe, no Zelenskyy slinking off to another country, not what Putin expected.” MotherGrowthWomanUkraineSoldiersExtreme Conditions Author:Shellen Lubin
“Control will kill you. Awareness will save you. And acceptance is part of awareness (Acceptance as in 'this is what it is' not as in 'this is the way it will always be'). Why? And why is acceptance the second step toward change? Because acceptance of where you are is necessary in order to move anywhere else.” RealityGrowthChangeProgressAcceptanceSelf AwarenessMeaningControlAwareness Not Control Author:Shellen Lubin
“I gave up on honoring Christopher Columbus long before the country did and have often espoused the questioning of the path trod by those we studied as the great explorers. What havoc they wreaked on the lands they explored. And who really did the exploring? The myth of the lone white man braving the new land is just that, a myth-- the local guides were the ones who knew the territory and did the work, including the work of keeping them all alive. And yet, indigenous populations explored as well, and some wreaked their own havoc on other populations at the same time that they grew worlds. History is incredibly complicated.” RealityGrowthHistoryEvolutionPerceptionMythClarityComplexityExplorers Day Author:Shellen Lubin