“But the problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose. At some point – scarred and exhausted – you either accept that you must become a woman – that you are a woman – or you die. This is the brutal, root truth of adolescence – that it is often a long, painful campaign of attrition. Those self-harming girls, with the latticework of razor cuts on their arms and thighs, are just reminding themselves that their body is a battlefield. If you don’t have the stomach for razors, a tattoo will do, or even just the lightning snap of the earring gun in Claire’s Accessories. There. There you are. You have just dropped a marker pin on your body, to reclaim yourself, to remind you where you are: inside yourself. Somewhere. Somewhere in there.”

“The problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose.”

“You’re just using me for my body.” “You don’t have a body,” I’d remind him. “Throw that in my face.” “Technically, you don’t have a face either.”

“There are many different parts to ourselves, and to become a woman of knowledge, you must know all the parts. There is a part of you that is actually just your vitality, your life force. Get to know the part of yourself that is just being or just a quality of living in your life force . . .And as there is a part of you likes to just be, there is a part of you that likes to do things. Perhaps the part of you that is always accomplishing things has taken over the part that just likes to relax in silence, maybe even to the point where the part of you that likes to just "be" is overshadowed. Is that possible?”

“Remind yourself often that self-esteem is ephemeral. You will have it, lose it, cultivate it, nurture it, and be forced to rebuild it over and over again.”

“Accept yourself. Love yourself just as you are. Your finest work, your best movements, your joy, peace, and healing comes when you love yourself. You give a great gift to the world when you do that. You give others permission to do the same: to love themselves. Revel in self love. Roll in it. Bask in it, as you would the sunshine.”