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No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human.

Harriet Lerner

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Harriet Lerner
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More quotes by Harriet Lerner

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The term girl not only serves to avoid certain anxiety-arousing connotations inherent in the word woman regarding aggression, sexuality, and reproduction, it also serves to impart a tone of frivolousness and lack of seriousness to ambitious, intellectual, and competitive striving that women may pursue.
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It's a cliché, but also a deep truth (as cliché's tend to be), that you can't love another person very well if you don't love yourself.
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Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses.
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We all fear change, even as we seek it.
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It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run but, it will never make you less afraid.
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Although it's not useful to drown in despair, it's also not useful to keep a 'positive attitude' when this means concealing or denying real emotions.
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Women are raised to be the nurturers and steadiers of rocked boats, to hold relationships in place as if our lives depended on it. But it shores up your own dignity and integrity if you're able to say, There are a million things I love about you, and I want our relationship to continue. I forgive you 95 percent, but not this 5 percent.
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The first world we find ourselves in is a family that is not of our choosing.
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Wherever you find a wife and mother-in-law slugging it out, you'll find a son who's not speaking up to either his mother or his wife.
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Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is to stop trying to be helpful.
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Whole-hearted listening is the greatest spiritual gift you can give to the other person.
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The miracle is that your children will love you with all your imperfections if you can do the same for them.
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Anxiety is extremely contagious, but so is calm.
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If you pursue a distancer, he or she will distance more. Consider it a fundamental law of physics.
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Believing that all women should want to be mothers makes about as much sense as believing that all men should want to be engineers.
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The bolder and more courageous you are, the more you will learn about yourself.
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The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don't want to.
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Every time I open Facebook, I see a post with something like, We must forgive or be prisoners of our own bitterness and hate. People think that forgiveness is all-or-nothing, but this myth hurts people. You can forgive 10, 97, or 14 percent. Forgiveness is complicated.
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Kids want nothing more than for all the important adults in their life to get along.
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The happiest people are focused on living their own life (not someone else's) as well as possible.
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