Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

I've had the longest mid-life crisis ever.

I kind of see myself as a cartoon that's on its way to becoming a real person that has to find that special amulet or mushroom to get to that next realm or level. I don't feel like anything is that tangible. It freaks me out, why I feel unhappy or conflicted and why that can change on a dime.

Growth is painful. Change is painful. But, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong.

If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.

If you're not busy being born, you're busy dying.

The pain, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn’t hate the cabinet door, I hated my life… My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change; nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.

I've been having a midlife crisis since I was four years old.

To gain your heart's desire you have to lose some part of your old life, your old self. To do that you have to have courage; without it, you can't make the leap. And if you don't make the leap you have only three choices: You can hate yourself for not taking the chance, you can hate the person from whom you've sacrificed your happiness, or you can hate the one who offered you happiness, and blame them for your lack of courage, convince yourself it wasn't real.

I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort.

It is in the turmoil of chaos that we discover what, if anything, we are.

Don't get so stuck in your ways that you can't change.

Life is about growth and change. When you are no longer doing that — that is your whisper; that is your whisper that you are supposed to do something else.

I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul...Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.

Doing battle with themselves that way, every day, all the time and sometimes it sucks, but other times it results in people making sort of a dream comprehensible to someone else.

Even when change is elective, it will disorient you. You may go through anxiety. You will miss aspects of your former life. It doesn't matter. The trick is to know in advance of making any big change that you're going to be thrown off your feet by it. So you prepare for this inevitable disorientation and steady yourself to get through it. Then you take the challenge, make the change, and achieve your dream.

I don't love who I am so I'm working on a fix

The key isn't winning -- or losing, it's making the attempt. I may never be what I ought to be, want to be -- but how will I know unless I try? Sure, it's scary, but what's the alternative? Stagnation - A safer, more terrible form of death. Not of the body, but of the spirit. An animal knows what it is, and accepts it. A man may know what he is -- but he questions. He dreams. He strives. Changes. Grows.

How much shall I be changed, before I am changed!

‎In every crisis there is a message. Crises are nature's way of forcing change - breaking down old structures, shaking loose negative habits so that something new and better can take their place.

The midlife crisis you're having at 30 is indulgent, but the midlife crisis you have at 45 is to an extent thrust upon you.

I would have perished had I not perished.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.

Nobody wants to do it - not real change, not soul change, not the painful molecular change required to truly become who you need to be. Nobody ever does real transformation for fun. Nobody ever does it on a dare. You do it only when your back is so far against the wall that you have no choice anymore.

Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.