Meredith Kimbrough MS, LPC

12/08/2024

‘Women have another option. They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice; to be competent, not merely helpful; to be strong, not merely graceful; to be ambitious for themselves, not merely for themselves in relation to men and children. They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society’s double standard about aging. Instead of being girls, girls as long as possible, who then age humiliatingly into middle-aged women, they can become women much earlier – and remain active adults, enjoying the long, erotic career of which women are capable, far longer. Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. Women should tell the truth.’
Susan Sontag - The Double Standard of Aging (1972)

Annie Leibovitz - portrait of Susan Sontag.

11/14/2024

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbor that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.”

–Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man & Prison Writings

Portrait by Napoleon Sarony

09/01/2024

"The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door."
Clarissa Pinkola Estés - Women Who Run With the Wolves, 1992.

Vilhelm Hammershøi - The Four Rooms, 1914.

08/28/2024

08/06/2024

/ Joseph Campbell /
"Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. Follow the path that is no path, follow your bliss."
"Joseph John Campbell was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth. Since the publication of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell's theories have been applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. His philosophy has been summarized by his own often repeated phrase: "Follow your bliss." He gained recognition in Hollywood when George Lucas credited Campbell's work as influencing his Star Wars saga. Campbell's approach to folklore topics such as myth and his influence on popular culture has been the subject of criticism, including from folklorists.
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Born: Joseph John Campbell, March 26, 1904, White Plains, New York, U.S.
Died: October 30, 1987, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.
Institutions: Sarah Lawrence College
Education: Dartmouth College, Columbia University (BA, MA)
Academic advisors: Roger Sherman Loomis
Influences: Adolf Bastian, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Oswald Spengler, James George Frazer, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Heinrich Zimmer, James Joyce, Thomas Mann
Influenced: George Lucas, Alan Watts, Jim Morrison, Christopher Vogler, Dan Harmon, Keith Buckley, Buddy Nielsen, Chuck Palahniuk, Dave Carter
Joseph Campbell (1991). “The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell : Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work”, Harper San Francisco

07/22/2024

06/18/2024

“…because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.”

— Alan Watts

[ Artist • Ana Novaes ]

05/04/2024

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”

~Francis Scott Fitzgerald

04/30/2024

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes 🌹

04/24/2024

Love can't be won or earned, for it is a spontaneous expression of affection and warmth in response to another person's being. It's “I love you,” not “I love what you are doing.” Love implies an acceptance that was denied the child. Once we give up our true self to play a role, we are fated to be rejected because we have already rejected ourselves.

-- Dr. Alexander Lowen

04/11/2024

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

04/04/2024

“Only when you are confronted with an insoluble conflict do you know something about the Self and how the Self operates; only in a situation where you are absolutely in need of a creative solution will you experience the source within yourself; so it always needs the impossible.”

— Carl Jung

[ Art • “Red” by Aykut Aydoğdu ]