How We Show Up Quotes

“Being on the receiving end of harmful oppressions is decidedly and specifically horrible. But wielding them has its own corrupting and denigrating impact on the imposer. This is important to understand, not because it makes those who hold privilege and power “victims” or somehow as equally harmed as those who experience racism, sexism, and classism. It’s important to understand because the work of dismantling systems of oppression that you benefit from isn’t altruistic work that just helps others; it is about your own liberation as well.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Accountability is also about recognizing and accepting that we are necessary and wanted. It’s understanding that when we neglect ourselves, don’t care for ourselves, or are not working to live as our best selves, we are devaluing the time, energy, and care that our loved ones offer us.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“The ability to hold space for another's experience is a critical one. It's not about giving advice or trying to fix anything, but witnessing and just being an active, attentive presence. Sitting with the grief and pain of other people can be so hard. I often find it uncomfortable to just listen and watch a loved one in distress. I want to fix, I want to advise.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Self-care can also just be another thing you procrastinate on and feel shitty about not doing. It can be another bullet on our to-do list, or a mask—Think positive thoughts! Document your gratitude!—that hides our messiness from ourselves and others. It is also some shamey, disingenuous bullshit to be told that if we practice deep breathing or detox from sugar, we’ll find some ease when the pain and exhaustion we’re feeling is mostly perpetuated by our culture. Your getting in your steps doesn’t make the hardship of experiencing systemic oppression or the energy suck of capitalism go away.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“We get to the future we want by practicing it now.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Don’t be afraid to love openly. Don’t be afraid to love. If you love somebody, just go for it. Make that family. You don’t need to have the right words or the right lexicon or anything like that. Don’t be afraid to go towards that love.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Freedom was the idea that together we can ensure that we all have the things we need—love, food, shelter, safety.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Perhaps most damaging, it includes a toxic individualism that creates barriers to deep connection and intimacy. When we are oriented toward doing it ourselves and getting ours, we cut ourselves off from the kinds of relationships that can only be built when we allow ourselves to be open and generous.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“People do not survive racism, xenophobia, gender discrimination, and poverty without developing extraordinary skills, systems, and practices of support. And in doing so, they carve a path for everyone else.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“The people with whom I need to build more are the ones who can stomach my tears and falling apart and don't think I'm too much.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“We exist, not as wholly singular, autonomous beings, nor completely merged, but in a fluctuating space in between. This idea was expressed beautifully in Desmond Tutu's explanation of the South African concept of Ubuntu. He said, "It is to say, my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. We belong in a bundle of life. It is not I think therefore I am. It says rather: I am human because I belong, I participate, and I share.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Not queer like gay; queer like escaping definition. Queer like some sort of fluidity and limitlessness all at once. Queer like a freedom too strange to be conquered. Queer like the fearlessness to imagine what love can look like, and to pursue it.”14”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Our joy becomes contagious. Our ability to love and comfort is expanded by others’ grief, our own too-big-to-be-contained pain finds its freedom in others’ witnessing of it. “Yes,” they say, “feel it all. Don’t be afraid to expand too wide or fall too far. We see you so you can’t disappear.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“This idea was expressed beautifully in Desmond Tutu’s explanation of the South African concept of Ubuntu. He said, “It is to say, my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. We belong in a bundle of life. We say a person is a person through other persons. It is not I think therefore I am. It says rather: I am human because I belong, I participate, and I share.”12”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“How does one reconcile the autonomy, agency, responsibility, and mutuality? What’s mine to carry, what’s someone else’s to carry, and what do we hold collectively?”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“When you’re at the table, everything at that table is political.” Who grew, transported, and prepared the food speaks to labor and migration. What recipe is used speaks to cultural expression and history. Which ingredients are in the food points toward land use and the environment.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Then, there's the gift of queerness. As poet Brandon Wint wrote in a much quote social media post several years ago, "Not queer like gay. Queer like escaping definition. Queer like some sort of fluidity and limitless all at once. Queer like a freedom too strange to be conquered. Queer like the fearlessness to imagine what love can look like, and to pursue it.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“We need a vision of community that is relevant and future-facing. A vision that brings us closer to one another, allows us to be vulnerable and imperfect, to grieve and stumble, to be held accountable and loved deeply. We need models of success and leadership that fundamentally value love, care, and generosity of resources and spirit.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Vivek Murthy, former surgeon general of the United States, wrote in the Harvard Business Review that “Loneliness and weak social connections are associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”6 A meta-analysis from the Association for Psychological Science warns that loneliness and social isolation significantly decrease length of life.7”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“As writer and activist Shon Faye puts it, “Queer is about removing labels and replacing them with a question. It is a side eye and a challenge back to mainstream society and politics. It says, ‘I don’t know the answer, but why are you asking the question?”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Loneliness and weak social connections are associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“i want a world where when people ask if we are seeing anyone we can list the names of all our best friends and no one will bat an eyelid. i want monuments and holidays and certificates and ceremonies to commemorate friendship.1 —ALOK VAID-MENON”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“One of the things I remind myself—and my loved ones remind me when I forget—is that my no isn’t just a no, it is also a yes. When I’m clear enough to say no to what I don’t want, then I have more room to say yes to what I do want. I can’t have my true yeses without the nos.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“When I was growing up, you couldn't be tender; that was not a safe option. This is both a function of masculinity as it's performed in our society, as well as the kind of neighborhood and circumstances I grew up in." One of the limitations of it is the exhaustion of having to have your guard up. "It's like having to put on armor. I guess that's the best metaphor that I could use. And I really do mean that metaphor very intentionally. Because it isn't just the protective shield, but it also makes it harder for you to move around in the world. And it's heavy, it's a burden. I've worked really hard in my adulthood to (a) kind of drop some of that shit; but (b) make sure that I'm in circumstances where I don't have to wear it in the first place. But it's fucking exhausting. And it's painful.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Amoretta Morris, a wise woman I know who is rethinking philanthropy, wrote, "It's okay to ask for help. In fact, by doing so, you are taking part in the divine circle of giving and receiving. While we often focus on what the request means for the asker/recipient, we should remember that giving can be transformative for the helper....By not asking for help when you need it, you are blocking that flow.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“The quintessential "self-made man" (and it is almost always a man) is self-sufficient, confident, stoic, righteously industrious, performatively heterosexual, and power. His success is signified through acquisition--home ownership, marriage, and children--and display of taste and things--craft beer and Courvoisier, Teslas and big trucks, bespoke suits and I-don't-care CEO hoodies. On the surface, it looks like that idea has evolved some. We have our Beyonces, Baracks, and Buttigiegs. But that doesn't mean the American Dream has become liberated from its origins or that its promise of freedom is more free. It just means more of us are permitted entry to the club if we do the double duty of conforming to its standards and continuing to meet the ones set for us--women must lean in, queer couples must get married, people of color must be master code-switchers.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“The American Dream is a clusterfuck of intersecting oppressions that function systemically and infect us individually.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Amoretta Morris, a wise woman I know who is rethinking philanthropy, wrote, “It’s okay to ask for help. In fact, by doing so, you are taking part in the divine circle of giving and receiving. While we often focus on what the request means for the asker/recipient, we should remember that giving can be transformative for the helper.… By not asking for help when you need it, you are blocking that flow.”10”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“awareness. And of the three—exercise, nutrition, and mindfulness—mindfulness is the most accessible to the greatest number of people. Almost everyone, regardless of economic situation, physical ability, geography, and age, can pause for a moment and take a breath to check in with themselves.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

“Suddenly, care of others is care of myself. Care of myself is care for others.”
― Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community