Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.(page 68)

Authenticity is also about the courage and the vulnerability to say, "Yeah, I'll try it. I feel pretty uncomfortable and I feel a little vulnerable, but I'll try it!"

Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.

To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else's hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that "I'm only human" does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.

We can only belong when we offer our most authentic selves and when we're embraced for who we are.

Everything that these folks are saying that they're trying to move away from, like comparison, perfectionism, judgement, and exhaustion as a status symbol - that all describes my life. It was more like a medical researcher studying a disease and figuring out he or she has it.

Cruelty is easy, cheap and rampant.