檳榔嶼

- In reality, females of all ages who either learn how to love as children (and consequently are self-loving) or learn how to be self-loving later in life often confront major difficulties, because our culture has not yet been transformed in ways to support and sustain female well-being.
- Often, especially for adult women, the choice to be self-loving requires tremendous sacrifice. This is especially true if prior to doing the work of self-love everyone in their lives were accustomed to devaluing and/or subordinating them. Acknowledge this helps us understand why masses of women who may intuitively know that they need to do the work of self-love are trapped by fear.
  - Significant changes mean we have to confront loss. Usually we will go through a period of depression. 
- Beth Benatovich, <<What We Know So Far: Wisdom Among Women>> : "Change is not easy for most people. Often a bad reality is preferable to the idea of change; we prefer to embrace the demons we know than the positive force we don't know."
- Being successful is not synonymous with being self-loving.
  - Gloria Steinem, <<Revolution from Within>> : the extent to which many women achieved success who continued to lack fulfillment because of persistent low self-esteem.
    - "Indeed, when core self-esteem remains low even into adulthood, no amount of external task-oriented achievement or approval seems able to compensate."
- I was so happy when I entered a committed relationship at nineteen, because I felt that once I had proven I could get a man, I could turn my attention to developing my intellectual and artistic abilities.... Yet I still felt terribly insecure inside. That insecurity did not leave me until I did the work of learning how to be self-loving. The work of self-love began with self-acceptance. To accept myself fully I needed to heal from childhood wounds caused by traumatic abuse.
  - My longtime relationship ended just when I had finished my doctorate and was taking a teaching job at a prestigious Ivy League institution. Even though I chose to end the relationship, my choice was motivated by my partner's refusal to wholeheartedly support and affirm my achievements.
  - Through all the time when completing my degree my male partner offered more support and encouragement than anyone had given me before. I was shocked and disappointed.
  - women had warned me repeatedly that my male partner was not bothered by my intelligence as long as he could be the superior mentor figure and I his sexy, rebellious protegee, but that my excelling, moving beyond him, would lead to rejection.
  - I irrationally felt that I must have done something wrong.
- Most women striving to achieve who are emotionally abandoned by their partners hear some familiar tape playing in their head blaming them for the end of the relationship, as though their desire for success created the problem, rather than the sexism of their partners.
  - Blaming themselves for the failure of relationships takes away from the joy and confidence they should be feeling about career advancement.
  - Not only did sexist thinkers, male and female, continue to promote the idea that these women were man-hating and unfeminine because they desired achievement, they were then portrayed as utterly monstrous and demonic. Represented as more ruthless and predatory than their male counterparts, they were "bitch goddesses."
  - While a man who is blunt, rigorous, and to the point is likely to be perceived as decisive and capable, a woman with those same skills will be described as bitchy and aggressive.
- The intensity of their hold on mass culture's imagination is so strong that many young women seeking to be independent, powerful, and successful have simply embraced the idea that they are "bitches". Their uncritical acceptance of this image is problematic. It helps perpetuate sexist stereotypes about powerful women. Young women want to embrace the "hard bitch" image because it keeps them from having to confront the pain that comes when females are punished for choosing to be self-actualized and successful.
- Then and now I want to live in a world where every female can make choices to grow spiritually and intellectually without having to resist in ways that increase our isolation and insecurity.
  - the truth remains that few women benefit from bitchness.
  - No self-loving woman wants to be a bitch.
  - Young women who think it's cool to be dubbed a bitch see dissing love as a badge of honor.
- Being self-loving utterly eliminates the possibility that a woman will choose to embrace negative categories as a sign of power.
- Popular culture consistently sends the message to females, and everyone else, that successful career women are failures when it comes to love.
  - working "feminist" career woman as narcissistically self-centered and evil.
- Powerful, self-loving women know that our ability to take care of our emotional needs is essential, but this does not take the place of loving fellowship and partnership.
  - People could not accept that a woman could be loving and passionately committed to work.
  - Passionate devotion to work has always heightened my awareness of the importance of love.
- Women in midlife know from partner who loves us helps us maintain self-esteem when we are continually under attack.
  - Vicious attacks and betrayal can assault the self-esteem of even the most powerful self-loving woman. Self-loving, high-achieving women rely on the care of our loved ones to survive brutal attacks. We need feel no shame to speak of the importance of this love.
  - Patriarchal devaluation of womanhood is far more likely to ensure that masses of women will remain alone and unloved.
- Living without communion, these women are often sick, lonely, bitter. They should never have surrendered their right to know love and to be fully self-actualized.
- Far too many women have allowed their choices to be informed by fear. They have refused to do the work of self-actualization, fearing it will keep them from getting a man, and even after making this sacrifice they find themselves alone.
  - Without self-love, they were not ready to know love.
- Love frees us to be ourselves and to be open to others' knowing us without shame or pretense.
  - Dying without beloved partnership but surrounded by a circle of love, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, <<The Wheel of Life>> : "Everything is bearable when there is love. My wish is that you try to give more people more love. The only thing that lives forever is love."
- Love is the foundation on which we build the house of our dreams. It's a house with many rooms. Relationships are part of the house, but they are not everything and never could be. The key is balance.
  - Self-loving, powerful, successful women that true love abounds in our lives. Unless we tell the world our love stories, the myths that we do not want love and cannot get love will continue to act as warnings, keeping other females in check, keeping them away from the truth that genuine love will always lead us to be more fully who we are. Men and women who want to know love will find us, and we will find them.