Best 68 quotes of Jeanette Leblanc on MyQuotes

1212Forget what they told you. You are love child of a passionate affair between goddess and universe. You were born of a steamy forbidden heat and you were made for the cyclone of unadulterated wholeness. You are a daughter of delight. You are the unconstrained mother of all. A fierce warrior. A wicked priestess. Your roots twist into this earth. Your spirit rises in glorious asana. You let loose with the howl of the wilderness you’ve held tight all these years. You are the wild. Untethered. Gloriously free.

A circle of women may just be the most powerful force known to humanity. If you have one, embrace it. If you need one, seek it. If you find one, for the love of all that is good and holy, dive in. Hold on. Love it up. Get Naked. Let them see you. Let them hold you. Let your reluctant tears fall. Let yourself rise fierce and love gentle. You will be changed. The very fabric of your being will be altered by this, if you allow it. Please, please allow it.

…And I know you are tired, love. I know the ache lodged in your bones. I know it has been a long road and you yearn for rest and comfort and home. But I’ve also seen you twirling, barefoot in the grass by moonlight. And that moon? She is dancing with the sun and this wild spinning earth, coaxing the ocean to crash on the shore, over and over again, just for you. And I know there are stars traveling unfathomable distances and burning to dust when they enter our atmosphere so that you can breathe a little bit of light into your soul when you need it the most.

Because in our pain we must find each other – mirror to mirror the grace of our shared humanity, the stunningly broken beauty of our shared grief. And you can let your grief see my grief and let our tears mingle into some kind of healing alchemy, and you’ll know what i know. That we are never alone. I promise. You and me? We are never, ever alone.

Because like the depths of the ocean that calls you home, you will never be easy. But darling, you were not brought here for easy. You are here for so much more. Because you are a boundary pusher. You’re a truth seeker. You’re temptation and seduction and heat. You’re a mirror and a sorcerer and inside you swirls the power of the ancients. So no, you are not easy. But in the space of that truth – please also know this. Do not get this confused with the notion that you do not deserve the deepest ease. Don’t for a minute let them convince you that you will not know the grace of a lover who does not require that you constantly translate yourself or diminish yourself or quiet your storm or tone down your extravagant love. Because that, my girl, is bullshit.

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.

Butterflies are beautiful, but the process of emerging from the chrysalis and spreading your wings can hurt like fucking hell. But still, you will survive the transformation (over and over again) and you will fly. Remember this when it hurts the most. This is the metamorphosis, the going down to liquid, and the rising again. It’s no joke – but damn, it’s one hell of a journey.

Deal resistance a death blow and make sweet love to your art all night long. Put on your fishnet thigh highs and your patent leather stilettos and your special occasion lingerie. Seduce the hell out of your own creative soul. It’s time for an epic lap dance. Dance for your paint and canvas, for fingers tripping across keyboard, for the open arms of motherhood, for the layers of flavor in the meals you create. Wind your hips down for the click of the shutter, for the 3 a.m. bathroom poem, for the late night lesson planning

Do not settle for living a version of your life designed by another. You are not meant to be gatekeeper or the holder of secrets and shame. You are here to live free and clear and into your own wide open truth. If you are spending too much time around people who expect otherwise you will begin to notice a feeling of constriction. Sometimes the life we create can be come a cage of our own making. Sometimes we stifle our truths to make others comfortable. Do not sacrifice your own comfort and freedom for that of another. The price you pay for this is too high. Define your own space. Remember your own divinity. You have a responsibility to this existence to live in fullness of your truth and art and purpose. Do not be diminished by circumstance or opinion or judgement. Your story is your own; nobody can write it but you. You hold the paper, you choose the pen, and you write your life story the way only you can. So, if someone tries to build you a box, rip that fucker apart and use the wood to build yourself a stage, then ditch your indoor voice and sing it loud. People are not meant to live quietly in small containers no matter how beautiful. A gilded cage is still confinement. You are a wild child – only the open air of freedom will do.

Do not try quiet my voice. Do not attempt to soften my edges or tame my prowl. I am inhabiting my wild. I am encompassing the dance. I am no longer burning down. That time is over. I am the white hot ignition. I am starting the fire. I am rising like flame.

Do you ever feel like you are giving far fewer fucks and yet still caring so much it sometimes feels like there is only the most tissue-thin layer separating your soul from this world? Like your heart may be broken but your spirit is still rising? Are you refusing to conform and somehow still fitting just right? Able to look people right in the eye without apology and also like you’re a teenager again, bashful and blushing and off-kilter, like that moment when lips unexpectedly pressed against your head and face buried in your hair fingers trailed down y our arm, the way your stomach can flip-flop like that, even now. Do you ever walk on purpose even when you have nowhere to go? Do you notice things deeply, like dark red lipstick prints on pristine white coffee mugs? Like the way whiskey burns and cool white sheets feel against your skin at the end of the day? Are you claiming your identity, clear and strong and true, and also sinking into the vast unknowable mystery of your all? Do your days feel like longing and acquiescence and learning to stop grasping at things that are ready to leave or that choose not to come closer? Are you making a home of your own skin and inviting the world inside? Are you learning that cultivating solid boundaries and driving into a wide open horizon both feel like freedom, like the harsh desert mountains and the soft ocean wisdom and the road to healing that joins the two? Does it all feels like solidity, like truth, like forgiveness and recklessness and heat and sexy and holy, all rolled up together? Do you crave the burn of heat from another and the for nothing to be louder than sound of your own heartbeat, all at once? Do you finally know that you can choose a love and a life that does not break you? That you can claim a softer beauty and a kinder want. That even your animal hunger can soften its rough edges and say a full-throated yes to what is good and kind and holy. Do you remember that insanity is not a prerequisite for passion and that there is another pathway to your art, one that does not demand your pain as payment for its own becoming? Are you learning to show up? To take up space? To feel the power? Is it full of contradiction, does it feel like fire underwater, are you rising to sing?

Even at the farthest reaches of empathy, we do not and cannot share the lived experience of another. We can never fully know the pain or betrayal a body and spirit has been made to hold in this life, or the way the universe articulates itself through the living of another. And in the knowing of that truth, we cannot ever say what anyone should or must forgive, or how they should handle something or what it takes for them to survive or the way they should heal or when or how or who or why. This this journey is an individual one, and should only ever be exactly that. Do not ever be tempted to project your own knowing onto the experience of another, or to prescribe your path onto their own.

Go now, and live. Experience. Dream. Risk. Close your eyes and jump. Enjoy the freefall. Choose exhilaration over comfort. Choose magic over predictability. Choose potential over safety. Wake up to the magic of everyday life. Make friends with your intuition. Trust your gut. Discover the beauty of uncertainty. Know yourself fully before you make promises to another. Make millions of mistakes so that you will know how to choose what you really need. Know when to hold on and when to let go. Love hard and often and without reservation. Seek knowledge. Open yourself to possibility. Keep your heart open, your head high and your spirit free. Embrace your darkness along with your light. Be wrong everyday once in a while, and don't be afraid to admit it. Awaken to the brilliance in ordinary moments. Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. See goodness in the world. Be Bold. Be Fierce. Be Grateful. Be Wild, Crazy and Gloriously Free. Be You. Go now, and live.

Has someone made you feel shame for taking selfies? For daring to believe so much in your beauty, in your style, in your badassery, in your joy, in your body, in your sensuality, in your humanity that you'd be so audacious, so bold, so (insert judgmental word of choice here) to want to witness and be witnessed for who and what you are. ⠀ ⠀ Has someone out there sold you their own truth that this is conceited or narcissistic or superficial? How dare you think so much of yourself that you stop to take a photo?⠀ ⠀ Forget. those. people. ⠀ ⠀ Seriously. You are worthy of capture. Of celebration. Of admiration. You are worthy of being seen and witnessed. Of being looked at with awe and with joy. Just as you are, right now. All made up and wearing the outfit that makes you feel like you can take on the world or just waking up in bed, bare skin and messy hair and eyes hazy with dreams. ⠀ ⠀ Here's the thing. Self-portraiture in art is as old as time. We are fascinated with the visible proof of our own existence, our own reality, and for damn good reason. We are infinite and complex and ever changing. We are majestic and mundane. Self-portraits, regardless of the medium, offer us a way to capture ourselves at a specific moment in time. ⠀ ⠀ For me, this is an act of self-love. Of self-honoring. Of owning myself as beautiful and sovereign. It is the way I learned to look at myself without needing to look away. It is how I learned to trace the lines of my own being with the sort of admiration I used to reserve for others, for those I loved or for rarified celebrities I never thought I could live up to. ⠀ ⠀ When I stop to take a photo of myself, it is a way to say that I am here. I have something to say that can't be spoken in words. It might be deep and poetic, or maybe I just damn well love my outfit and think you should see it. And that yes, it is a way to say I want to be seen and I no longer hold shame in that wanting.

Here you are. Still standing. Fierce with the reality of love and loss. Wearing the truth of our hearts on your tattered sleeves. And yes, this one very nearly took you out. And yes, there were days when the darkness was heavy and the climb out of that rabbit hole required you to mine your depths for strength you didn’t even know you had. But here you are. Broken open by hope. Cracked wide by loss. Full of longing and grief and the burn of that phoenix fire. Warrior painted with ashes. Embers from the blaze still clinging to your newborn skin, leaving you forever marked with scars of rebirth. And just look at you. Heart broken but still beating. Arms empty but still open. Face raised to the sky and giving thanks for the light, even when it hurts your eyes. My god, you are beautiful.

hold still. stay there. tease back the layers. you are in the space between your comfort zone and infinity. you want to hide. not be seen. not be open. not be vulnerable. but you have to. there are two ways to do this - soft and gentle or fast and hard. both will get you to the other side, if you let them.

Home is not just where we come from, It is where we choose to belong.

If you feel like this time you won’t survive the pain, remember that you will. You may not like it. There may be times when you don’t even want to, but survive you will. And thrive. And love again. This I know to be true.

If you’re going to love a poet you should know this. Our words are our truths. Our blood hums with verse. We break easily. Our words save us. Our stanzas keep us alive. If we loved you at all, we loved you truly. And you will never leave us but live under our skin and beneath the tips of our fingers and in the ink spill on blank page. Because poetry, like some love, is forever.

I hope that I get to see you love what you are. To know yourself as gift and worth and truth. That you see what a huge thing it is to have the courage to break your own heart. That you have chosen wholeness — even when it has shattered you. And that you will one day see that you can be whole and broken in the exact same spaces, that they nestle side by side — and that this is the way of things. Not your punishment for wrongdoing, or for not trying hard enough — but just the way of things. That you can stand and look at yourself in a mirror and see your goodness right there, see the worth of what you bring on the surface of your skin, just like I do. That you trust there is brilliance to come. That you own what is yours to own, both the bad and the good. That you do not insist on owning it all. It was never all yours to hold

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.

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 a 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, this 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 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. Imagine that I know something intimate and true of the woman who left them. That I could take those mugs home one day and an entire novel worth of characters would pour out, just like that.

I see you, beneath the surface. I see your untamable wild. I see your billowing heart. I see your unshed tears and your not yet dreams and your devotion to spirit. I see you howl at the moon and call the ocean home and ground to earth and grow taller than the trees. I see you. You are not alone. You are not invisible. You are seen. You are seen. You are seen. And my god, you are beautiful.

I see you, flawed and humble and road weary and proud and still in spite of the deep ache, somehow sure you’ve done all you can. I see all you feel but cannot speak. I see the way the words grow and swell, expanding your chest and pressing against the confines in your throat until they form the most unbearable pain, and the air around you so heavy with the weight of words unsaid. I see the way your chest caves in and your shoulders curl around and your arms hold your knees so tight that you circle in upon yourself. I see how in spite of this you are expanding, even though others wish you small and in spite of your own efforts to keep peace. I see that you are a wild thing, not meant for containment.

It can be said that we are built by many things. Biology and lineage. Grit and moonlight and ocean stone. By fire and water and air. By the lessons of the grandmothers and the pounding of blood through veins and the very first break. The way it felt when you learned the truth of boundary and by the day you stood there and knew nothing could every be the same.

I’ve lost my wild heart once. Twice. Too many times to count. I’ve lost her most often when I’ve forgotten myself, when I’ve denied my own truths, when I’ve pushed down the need to create for so long that my heart...she finds better things to do. The funny thing is, that the losing and the finding are interwoven. We must lose our wild hearts from time to time, I believe. We must so that we know why we need them. We must so that we remember that in order to be found we must go into the wilderness. Sometimes, it is only in the getting lost that we can find our way back home.

I wonder now, is there is a word for strength leaving your body? Or love? What of its arrival? Or is it only pain that the body names, and then only in it’s leaving? It is true, I know, that there are some things for which there are no words. Only the spaces between the words we know to say all that must be said And I think about how some calls come deep, for years and years before I finally answer. I wonder why this is so. And I wonder what this tells you about me.

Never get too attached to the first draft of anything – this includes writing, art, homes, love. You will revise and revise and revise. We are always in the midst of our own becoming.

Nothing big ever happens, good or bad, unless the floor falls out first. Let your longing wind you down through that spiral. And know that falling can be the most wickedly awesome and totally safe thing you’ve ever done. Down, down, down, because when you hit that solid ground you’ll know. You might touch down softly, or you might land in an ungraceful thud. But land you will and when you’re ready, you can stretch your shaky legs, dust yourself off tossing your head back to the heavens and proclaim ‘Here I am! All that I am, and all that I will be.” And your heart will still love what it loves. And you will remember that was good in you, and in her. And these memories will comfort and will serve you as you move through life, open to love – wherever and whenever it finds you.

Out there somewhere there is a love who will never dream of calling you too much. Who speaks, like you, in poetry and candlewax and stardust. Who runs outside on stormy nights to howl at the moon. Who collects bones and sings incantation and talks to the ancestors. And that lover, when you find him or her, will see you and know you – just as you are and just as you should be. And they will say yes. Yes, you. I will go there with you. I have been waiting for this.

Poetry has a long, long memory. After our love is long gone, we will still be reading your poems. You will not be the only one whose heart this breaks. Know that we will stand , reading the words written about our love – and we will ache for you The body will remember the way you shifted and sighed as skin met skin and those words will pay tribute to the lines that were composed while we moved through this world together. Because of this, we will never truly forget you. Let us remember.

Some days we need as much quiet courage as we can muster. NOt to risk our lives or our hearts to break paradigms or change the world. But just to wake up and push through the small and aching spaces. To sit down and do the work. To show up in love and fullness. Sometimes, just those things take so much. If this is you today, know that we are in it together. And there’s got to be some power in that.

Sometimes there is so much that needs to be said that we must get really quiet in the hopes that someone out there is listening hard enough to the silence to hear every last word.

Take more selfies. Not because you need validation or likes or comments. but because you are here on this earth. Alive and holy and true. And yes, your beauty deserves to be seen and known, most especially by you. You are worthy of being the subject of your own art. It is okay to capture the process of your own becoming. To be your own kind and gentle and fierce witness. To learn the truth of your eyes and your skin and your bones. To choose to show what wants to be shown, to name what wishes to be named, to claim ownership of the story that is told about you by being the one to tell it. Dear girl. YOU are the greatest art you will ever create. The masterpiece. The magnum opus. You’re it. However you want to be. Look at yourself now, miracle that you are, look at yourself and soak in the wonder, until you no longer want to look away.

That thing you’re afraid of? That label you shy away from? That word that seems too bold? That audacious goal? The life you think you don’t deserve? Aren’t talented enough to have? Aren’t brave enough to claim? Fuck. That. Shit. None of that baggage you’ve been carrying around has a place this year. Kick to the the curb. Now. This year only has space for the bold and the audacious and the brave. Don’t try to convince me you are not those things. I know better and your excuses hold no weight here. You are brave and bold and audacious and one hell of a goddess. Always have been. Always will be. So fill every step you take with intention. Then remember that intention is worthless without action—so get a move on, sugar

The art of a sincere and heartfelt apology is one of the greatest skills you will ever learn.

The audacity is in the living, not in the choosing. You are fearless enough to keep breathing; in the face of loss and pain and humility and gratitude and gifts and brilliance and confusion. This is the amazing thing. Right or wrong can never be anything but small things in the face of your gigantic, intrepid spirit

The less I know – the more the world opens up, wide and waiting. This is how I have come to understand the taste of freedom. I am filled with resistance. But still, I am here. One letter on this screen at a time, I am here. Neck aching and back bent and eyes burning, I am here. This is what it means to show up. This is what it means to trust the calling. This is what It means to write.

There is no shame in feeling broken. In seeking help. In searching for healing. Sometimes it is the breaking that leads us to the source of our own becoming. But we need not suffer alone. When you feel trauma or shame, if you feel depressed or alone – speak your truth, ask for help, insist without ceasing on the support that you need. You are not alone. As long as I am on this earth and forever after – you will never be alone.

There is not enough air in the room but you are breathing. There is nobody here but you are held. You have broken and the world is breaking and we will always rebuild. Do you hear me, love? We will always rebuild.

These words and these stories can save a life. Who knows – maybe even your own.

This story is always yours for the telling. This has always been yours. You can expand to fill it all or take up the smallest corner. You can write in invisible ink. You can tell your story in red wine stains and spilled ink and bite marks. You can only write in pencil so it can always be erased. You can write in layers, and turn the page and write sideways. You can spin spiral and make your words dance. You can ink it on the surface of your skin or x-ray vision the story onto the blank canvas of your bones. You can write a novel and then let the whole thing dissolve in the waves. You can write the truth and bury it in the ground, throw it in the fire, fold it into paper airplanes and watch it fly, roll it into a note in a bottle and toss it in the ocean and let it find its own way home. Or, you share it with the whole fucking world. You can care and not care and care-not-care all at once. But you get to write. And you get to choose the story you tell. And there’s no freedom bigger or bolder or braver than that.

Today, take a moment to celebrate you. Your beauty. Your style. Your sense of inner mischief. The way you glow in the sunlight. Your strut in those badass boots. The way the dress hugs your soft curves. The gleam in your eye. The curve of your irrepressible smile. The line of your collarbone. The way you know, underneath all the doubts and insecurities and demons that you are, in fact, magic. And what’s more? You always have been. You don’t need someone else to say so. This isn’t for likes or comments. You don’t need to book a photoshoot for this celebration. This is between you and you. For you to take the time to see yourself. To smile at your own beauty. Find a spot where you feel the energy. Where the sun hits just so. Where the colors or textures make you feel more alive, more you. Find somewhere to prop your phone and set the timer on your camera. You don’t need special equipment. And then just see what happens. Be open and curious about what wants to be seen. If someone sees you and stares or laughs or has the nerve to judge, you just ground down and rise up even more. They are just missing out on how good it can feel to see and know your own magic and beauty. And yes. If you want, and it feels good, you should share it. Because we want to see you and celebrate you too.

To know the hope and the struggle and the stay still and the run away and the come here and the push back. And also what it is to say yes, to be present exactly where you are.

To live this life. To live it with wholeness and gratitude and trust. In the pain and the glory. In the mess and the grace. In the sacred and the desperation. This is the stuff of which real superheros are born.

Truth? Sometimes I question every last thing I’m doing. Truth? Right now, those questions swirl every damn day. Is this also true for you? Still, we keep moving forward, you and I. We try new things. We doggedly keep on doing the old things because though they may not have worked in the past it doesn’t feel like crazy to continue, it feels like the space of trusting some wild sort of knowing. We love, good and hard. We show up for life. In the midst of depression, insanely messy houses, and bank accounts sliding closer and closer to that fine red line, and panic attacks, and kids who won’t listen but who damn well know how to question and love. And we make stuff. My god, the way we keep on making stuff. Because we can and we have to. Because it’s the only damn thing that feels right when everything else feels a hundred kinds of wrong. We create. Defiant and determined and true. Weary hearts brought to blazing life if only for those wild moments we dance with the muse.

Turn off your phone, and your computer and your mind. Find your heart center and send it compassion. See the holiness in everyone you meet. Honor it. Know your worth. Know your worth. Know your worth. Accept no less. Become familiar with the space where compromise is unkind. Nurture your exquisite loneliness. Let it teach you. Light candles at every opportunity. Always wear perfume, it helps you remember yourself. Touch your inked ribs lightly when you forget who you are.

We are doing it, me and you. We are doing it with heart. And with art. And with soul and blind faith and ancient knowing. Because we have to. Because there are people who need us to. Because WE need us to most of all. No matter how discouraged you’ve been. No matter how the destructive old patterns have been returning, knocking loudly at your door. No matter the moments of utter freeze or massive resistance or sheer exhaustion. Go out today and make something. Something brave and defiant and determined and true. And then muster up your last bit of moxie and hold out your arms and offer it to the world. Say “I made this. For me and for you”. Say “ This is what keeps me from the rabbit hole”. Say “This is how I go on”. Say “I see you, too and I know how hard it is and I want you to have this to make it a little bit better” I promise. It changes things. For all of us.

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.

We are in this together. None of us truly walk in isolation, even when we cannot sense the presence of another for miles upon miles. Even in the worst of our desolation. Even during our coldest 3am breakdown. Even when we shut out the world and spin in circles until we collapse. Even then the light still gets in. Even then the heart still opens and reaches, tendrils of hope curling and bending toward slivers of light. Upward, outward, in all directions – seeking light at all cost. One way or another, we all grow toward the light.