Tricia Friedman

“Scholar Marilyn Frye uses the metaphor of a birdcage to describe the interlocking forces of oppression.16 If you stand close to a birdcage and press your face against the wires, your perception of the bars will disappear and you will have an almost unobstructed view of the bird. If you turn your head to examine one wire of the cage closely, you will not be able to see the other wires. If your understanding of the cage is based on this myopic view, you may not understand why the bird doesn’t just go around the single wire and fly away. You might even assume that the bird liked or chose its place in the cage. But if you stepped back and took a wider view, you would begin to see that the wires come together in an interlocking pattern—a pattern that works to hold the bird firmly in place. It now becomes clear that a network of systematically related barriers surrounds the bird. Taken individually, none of these barriers would be that difficult for the bird to get around, but because they interlock with each other, they thoroughly restrict the bird. While some birds may escape from the cage, most will not. And certainly those that do escape will have to navigate many barriers that birds outside the cage do not.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“LGBTQ resilience—what’s it all about? It’s about coming out to yourself and then coming out to others, on your own timeline. It’s about recognizing the evolution of gender and sexuality across your lifetime—who you are today may change over time, and that’s something to stand up for.”
― Anneliese A. Singh, The Queer and Transgender Resilience Workbook: Skills for Navigating Sexual Orientation and Gender Expression

“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go. Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost”
― Adreanna Limbach, Tea and Cake with Demons: A Buddhist Guide to Feeling Worthy

“THERE’S SOMETHING IMPORTANT that the moment of stopping to listen has in common with the labyrinthine quality of attention-holding architecture: in their own ways, each enacts some kind of interruption, a removal from the sphere of familiarity. Every time I see or hear an unusual bird, time stops, and later I wonder where I was, just as wandering some unexpected secret passageway can feel like dropping out of linear time. Even if brief or momentary, these places and moments are retreats, and like longer retreats, they affect the way we see everyday life when we do come back to it.”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy