It is not your job to make other people comfortable with who you are. Be wary of those who don’t want you to change or grow. Grow anyway — there is no alternative.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 66
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 30, 2021
I wish I could go back and tell the fearful young person I was what I know now about fire and growth. What would I say to her? Even if you do not feel brave, practice bravery. There will be times in your life when you feel as if life is burning down around you, but know that renewal is in its wake. Trust in what will open, what will grow, after something else has burned away, even when the landscape is charred black. And trust that one of the things guaranteed to grow — time after time, fire after fire — is you. Possibilities, like seeds, are being released into the air.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 94-95
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 6, 2015
Maybe you have a little voice inside that says you aren’t strong enough to handle what life’s left at your feet. That voice lies. Prove it wrong today — then repeat, repeat, repeat.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 28
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 1, 2014
Accept that you are a work in progress, both a revision and a draft: you are better and more complete than earlier versions of yourself, but you also have work to do. Be open to change. Allow yourself to be revised.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 22
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 6, 2020
Consider all you’ve outlived — including the life you thought you would have. You are durable, adaptable, resilient; just being here is a triumph. Hour by hour, prove the voice inside wrong — the one that says you can’t do it. Do it.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 16
Photo: Centreville, Virginia, February 7, 2010
Revise the story you tell yourself about starting over. Consider not only how terrifying change can be but also how exhilarating. Consider this time an opportunity to make a new and improved life.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 12
Photo: American Library Association Annual Conference, Washington DC, June 22, 2019
Trying softer isn’t about knowing or doing the right thing; it’s about being gentle with ourselves in the face of pain that is keeping us stuck. Because no matter how hard we try, we can’t hate or shame ourselves into change. Only love can move us toward true growth. This is the love given to us by a gentle, kind, compassionate, good God — and the love we are invited to give ourselves too.
— Aundi Kolber, Try Softer, p. 193-194
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 13, 2020
Focus on who you are and what you’ve built, not who you’d planned on being and what you’d expected to have. Trust that the present moment — however difficult, however different from what you’d imagined — has something to teach you.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 9
Photo: Bremen, Germany, November 28, 2003
The ending of one thing is also the beginning of another. What is the next adventure? There is room enough in this life — with its many endings, its many beginnings — for things you could not have imagined last week or last year or ten years ago.
KEEP MOVING
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 4
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, 10/30/2020
Just as there’s no way to rush a flower to bloom, we cannot go beyond the stage we are in — we have to move at the pace that feels doable to us. This is why I invite you to respect the intensity of your experience and to remember that the in-between is sacred too. If I’ve learned anything, it may be that the way we do something matters as much as what we do. The process of blooming is as valuable as the flower it produces.
— Aundi Kolber, Try Softer, p. 19
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, October 10, 2020