Top 94 Quotes & Sayings by Harriet Lerner - Page 2

My debt to feminism is simply incalculable. Feminism allowed me to see past a 'reality' that I had once taken as a given. It helped me to pay attention to countless voices, my own included, that I had been taught 'don't count.' Feminism allows me to maintain hope.

Being in touch with our bodies, or more accurately, being our bodies, is how we know what is true. Harriet

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."

It's remarkable how many couples can precisely describe their particular pattern of painful fighting, and claim to be helpless to change it.

The more we seek exclusivity in friendship, the more it becomes obligatory and the less likely it is to fulfill the wonderful vision of what true friendship can be.

If what we are doing with our anger is not achieving the desired result, it would seem logical to try something different.

Throughout evolutionary history, anxiety and fear have helped every species to be wary and to survive. Fear can signal us to act, or, alternatively, to resist the impulse to act. It can help us to make wise, self-protective choices in and out of relationships where we might otherwise sail mindlessly along, ignoring signs of trouble.

Judging people for whom they love (a same sex partner) rather than by whom they harm, should in itself merit a psychiatric diagnosis.

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.

Telling a true story about personal experience is not just a matter of being oneself, or even or finding oneself. It is also a matter of choosing oneself.

As long as we can feel hope, there is hope.

It's true that over-apologizing interrupts the flow of conversation and irritates the person who has to stop and offer reassurance, like, "No, it's fine, don't worry about it." But far greater than the challenge of toning down unnecessary "sorrys" is offering an apology when one is due.

Intensity is not the same as intimacy, although we tend to confuse these two words.

Whatever your sex fantasy is with your partner, consider it normal.

I'm a good example of wanting to apologize only for my precise share of a problem--as I calculate it, of course--and I expect my husband Steve to apologize for his share, also as I calculate it. Since we're not always of one mind on the math, it can lead to the theater of the absurd.

We need to hear the sound of our voice for what we think and need.

Before modern feminism, stories of female ambition were silenced or erased; even now, they are told with apology ("Yes, it's a great honor to be a Nobel Prize laureate, but really, what I love best is staying home and being a mother to Kevin and Annie").

It is an act of courage to acknowledge our own uncertainty and sit with it for a while.

As many have observed, it is easy to tell a lie, but it is almost impossible to tell only one.

Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change.

Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses.

You can't evaluate a prospective partner if you insulate your relationship from your family and friends--and his.

If you exchanged wedding vows, tape them to your bathroom mirror and read them aloud to yourself every morning along with the ritual brushing of teeth. It's not realistic to believe that you will live your promises as a daily practice -- unless you're a saint or a highly evolved Zen Buddhist. Not where marriage is concerned. But you can make a practice of returning to your vows when the going gets rough.

deception and 'con games' are a way of life in all species and throughout nature. Organisms that do not improve their ability to deceive - and to detect deception - are less apt to survive.

Often when someone apologizes - like a parent who says to a child, "I'm very sorry I neglected you when you were a kid" - they also ask, "Do you forgive me?," because they want the other person to be over it. However, healing can take a great deal of time. And if we forgive too quickly, we cut the process short.

Anger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others. . . .If, however, we do not use our anger to define ourselves clearly in every important relationship we are in--and manage our feelings as they arise--no one else will assume this responsibility for us.

Believing that all women should want to be mothers makes about as much sense as believing that all men should want to be engineers.

When anxiety disrupts functioning, it's psychiatric illness.

Intimate relationships cannot substitute for a life plan. But to have any meaning or viability at all, a life plan must include intimate relationships.

There are some things for which there is no apology, and on the question of slavery, there is no adequate apology for ripping people out of their homeland and bringing them here in chains. There is no adequate apology for the ongoing horrific legacy of racism.

Pretending can be a bold form of experimentation and inventiveness. In pretending joy or happiness, we may discover or enhance our capacity for it.

Men are often (though not always) the pursuers for sex, just like women are often (though not always) the pursuers for conversation.

Kids want nothing more than for all the important adults in their life to get along.

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.