Some days the to-do list gets done, the kids get fed, the emails get answered, and somehow there’s still dinner on the table. Other days it’s 11 PM and you’re finally sitting down for the first time since 6am, wondering when exactly you stopped having time to just breathe.
If you’re somewhere in that space right now, these beautiful quotes for women are here to remind you that what you’re carrying is real, that the strength you keep showing up with matters, and that you’re allowed to need something for yourself too.
When You’re Running on Empty but Showing Up Anyway
1. “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” – Maya Angelou
2.“Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong. It’s hard because you’re doing it right.” – Glennon Doyle, Untamed (2020)
3. “Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am brave and worthy of love and belonging.” – Brené Brown, Daring Greatly (2012)
4. “If you are uncomfortable in deep pain, angry, yearning, confused; you don’t have a problem, you have a life.” – Glennon Doyle, Untamed (2020)
5. “The truest, most beautiful life never promises to be an easy one. We need to let go of the lie that it’s supposed to be.” – Glennon Doyle, Untamed (2020)
6. “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868)
7. “Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a new way to stand.” – Oprah Winfrey
When You Need Someone to Just Acknowledge How Much You Do
8. “Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected.” – Michelle Obama
9. “To be a good parent, you need to take care of yourself so you can have the physical and emotional energy to take care of your family.” – Michelle Obama
10. “Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” – Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer (2000)
11. “Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed.” – Linda Wooten
12. “The very fact that you worry about being a good mother means that you already are one.” – Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper (2004)
13. “For me, being a mother made me a better professional, because coming home every night to my girls reminded me what I was working for. And being a professional made me a better mother, because by pursuing my dreams, I was modeling for my girls how to pursue their dreams.” – Michelle Obama, “Let Girls Learn” partnership announcement (2015)
14. “She put us first, always, sometimes to the detriment of herself. She encouraged me not to do that. She’d say being a good mother isn’t all about sacrificing. It’s really investing and putting yourself higher on your priority list.” – Michelle Obama, on her own mother
When You’re Trying to Stay Soft in a World That Rewards Hard
15. “Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.” – Brené Brown
16. “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we’ll ever do.” – Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection (2010)
17. “Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.” – Brené Brown
18. “I will not stay, not ever again – in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.” – Glennon Doyle, Untamed (2020)
19. “When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself.” – Glennon Doyle, Untamed (2020)
20. “You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anyone.” – Maya Angelou
21. “The challenge is not to be perfect. It is to be whole.” – Jane Fonda
When You’re Learning to Take Up Space
22. “Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” – Maya Angelou
23. “I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.” – Audre Lorde
24. “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” – Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)
25. “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” – Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light (1988)
26. “I raise up my voice – not so I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard.” – Malala Yousafzai
27. “We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be.” – Glennon Doyle, Untamed (2020)
28. “A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.” – Gloria Steinem
When You’re Carrying Guilt About Not Being Enough
29. “You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding.” – Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things (2012)
30. “I think I am in the middle of figuring out that being a woman is a privilege, not a burden. I keep getting these wonderful small moments of clarity and grace.“ – Cheryl Strayed, Wild (2012)
31. “Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. What a terrible burden for children to bear, to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living.” – Glennon Doyle, Untamed (2020)
32. “Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.” – Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things (2012)
33. “These things are your becoming.” – Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things (2012), on the long, useless days that somehow add up to something
When You Need Remind That You Were Someone Before All of This
34. “I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.” – Maya Angelou
35. “I am not just a lesbian. I am not just a poet. I am not just a mother. Honor the complexity of your vision and yourselves.” – Audre Lorde, Conversations with Audre Lorde (2004)
36. “Most of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers, because they were not able to become the unique people they were born to be.” – Gloria Steinem, Moving Beyond Words (1994)
37. “Selfless women make for an efficient society but not a beautiful, true, or just one. When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need more selfless women.” – Glennon Doyle, Untamed (2020)
38. “Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.” – Alice Walker
39. “If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977)
When You’re Trying to Forgive Yourself
40. “Courage allows the successful woman to fail and to learn powerful lessons from the failure so that in the end, she didn’t fail at all.” – Maya Angelou
41. “Life is alchemy, and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself.” – Glennon Doyle, Untamed (2020)
42. “Recovery is an unbecoming. My healing has been a peeling away of costume after costume until here I am, still and naked before God, stripped down to my real identity.” – Glennon Doyle, Love Warrior (2016)
43. “I was not built to be careful. I was built to love wildly, to make mistakes, and then to get back up.” – Cheryl Strayed, Wild (2012)
44. “What we know matters, but who we are matters more.” – Brené Brown
When You Just Need Something Simple and True
45. “A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she’s in hot water.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
46. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt, This Is My Story (1937)
47. “The best protection any woman can have is courage.” – Elizabeth Cady Stanton
48. “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.” – Florence Nightingale
49. “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” – Glennon Doyle, Carry On, Warrior (2013)
50. “In every conceivable manner, the family is a link to our past, the bridge to our future.” – Alex Haley
For the Days You Just Need to Feel Seen
51. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
52. “The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. These things are your becoming.” – Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things (2012)
53. “I am loved and have always been loved and will always, always be loved. I have never been separated from this love. I have only convinced myself I was.” – Glennon Doyle, Love Warrior (2016)
54. “Still I Rise.” – Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise (1978)
Short enough to tattoo. Heavy enough to carry you through a hard week.
55. “Grief shatters. If you let yourself shatter and then you put yourself back together, piece by piece, you wake up one day and realize that you have been completely reassembled.” – Glennon Doyle, Untamed (2020)
The Thing About Women Who Hold Everything Together
The ones who hold everything together are usually the last ones to let anyone hold them. These beautiful quotes for women remember that the strength you bring to everyone else doesn’t have to come at the cost of yourself, and that you were a whole person with a whole life before any of the roles you’re currently carrying.
If that last thought landed somewhere tender, the next piece goes deeper into it: Why Beautiful Quotes for Women Remind that You Were Whole Before Were a Mother
