Andi

“I never escaped the pinpoint pain of the term "White Indian." I scoffed at it. I made fun of it and refuted it. I joked about it with friends and family to prove to myself how much I didn't care.

Ever since then, though, a stem of fear sprouts in me. When I hear someone move fluently through their own tribal tongue, I flinch at their authenticity. When I watch other Natives dance in elaborate ceremonial regalia, I swallow my awe so it can instead fester into shame.

This feeling of being fake doesn't influence reality. I am still dark enough to get stopped at airport security, followed around stores, stopped by police in border states, talked down to by people paler than me, and asked racist questions about where I'm from or what kind of magic powers I have. I still get treated like a liar or a relic when I tell someone I'm Native. I still feel a rooted, thrumming connection to the beach and the ground whenever I go home to Sequim, to where my tribe is. I still keep a mental record of all the stories I have learned, either from family or from historic documents. None of it validates me enough to remove the blight of impostor syndrome.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“The moment we start proving ourselves is the moment we relinquish the power of authenticity; for our true worth shines brightest when it doesn't seek validation.”
― Monika Ajay Kaul

“What plays out in our minds acts out in our bodies, and vice versa. There is sufficient scientific evidence supporting this concept.”
― Boadi Moore, Healing Your Attachment Wounds: A Guide to Healing What's Hidden in Your Attachment Style and Relationships

“...romantics are, ironically, the worst culprits for being relationship avoidant. This is for two reasons. The first being that committing to someone would mean they would have to call off the search for love, and nothing is more romantic than longing. The second is that they spend a lot of time thinking about who their partner might be, so it's hard to find the 3D version that matches who they've invented in their mind. It's less about perfection, and more about prescriptivism. They write their own version of how they think love is going to pan out, then they find it perplexing that no one seems to know the specific plot and characters other than them.”
― Dolly Alderton, Dear Dolly