A Woman’s Worth
by Marianne Williamson
Random House, New York, 1993. 143 pages.
I began this book shortly after my divorce was finalized. Honestly, in bad moments, I’m feeling wounded, a failure, and unlovable. My mind knows all that is not true, but my heart needs uplifting messages of truth. And that’s exactly what this book provided for me. I found myself posting resonant quotations from this book over and over on Sonderquotes.
I’ll post some of my favorites here, and that will give you the idea.
“Every woman I know wants to be a glorious queen, but that option was hardly on the multiple-choice questionnaire we were handled when we were little girls. Rarely did anyone tell us we could choose to be magic.”
“We have a job to do reclaiming our glory. So what if we are called grandiose? So what if we are accused of being in dangerous denial of our faults, our neuroses, our weaknesses? It’s an ancient trick this, telling a woman that her glory is her sickness. You bet we’re in denial. We deny the power of weakness to hold us back, be it the weakness of the world or the weakness in our own past. We are on to better things, such as owning our beauty and honoring the courage it has taken us to get here and claiming our natural power to heal and be healed. We’re not grandiose, but we’re tired — tired of pretending we are guilty when we know we’re innocent, that we’re plain when we know we’re beautiful, and that we’re weak when we know we’re strong. For far too long, we have forgotten we are cosmic royals. Our mothers forgot, their mothers forgot, and their mothers before them. We regret their tears; we mourn their sadness. But now, at last, we break the chain.”
“Joy is our goal, our destiny. We cannot know who we are except in joy. Not knowing joy, we do not know ourselves. When we are without joy, we grope in the dark. When we are centered in joy, we attain our wisdom. A joyful woman, by merely being, says it all. The world is terrified of joyful women. Make a stand. Be one anyway.”
“No man can convince a woman she’s wonderful, but if she already believes she is, his agreement can resonate and bring her joy.”
“There’s a lot of talk today about whether a woman can have it all. The problem isn’t having it all but receiving it all, giving ourselves permission to have a full and passionate life when our cultural conditioning has denied us that for centuries. The biggest limit to our having is our small reach, our shy embrace. As long as it’s considered unfeminine to have a full appetite — which it is, because it is recognized that whatever we allow ourselves to truly desire we usually get — then we will not sit down at life’s banquet but only at its diner. This is ridiculous, and it holds back the entire world for women to live at half-measure. It’s also an insult to men to suggest that they can’t dance with goddesses, as though a woman at full power might step on their toes.”
If these uplift you as they did me, I recommend getting the book and reading more of this encouragement for yourself.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/womans_worth.html
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Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.