Lately, I'd been feeling like I was standing outside watching everything and everybody. Wishing I could take the part of me that was over there and the part of me that was over here and push them together—make myself into one whole person like everybody else.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a longing for unity within oneself, feeling fragmented between different aspects of identity.
Jacqueline Woodson's quote encapsulates the struggle of feeling divided between different roles or identities in life. It highlights a deep desire for wholeness and integration, reflecting a common human experience of wanting to be fully present and authentic rather than feeling like an outsider looking in. This resonates particularly with those who grapple with their sense of self in various social or personal contexts, yearning for a seamless identity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about personal growth and finding one's true self.
'Brown Girl Dreaming' was a book I had a lot of doubts about - mainly, would this story be meaningful to anyone besides me? My editor, Nancy Paulsen, kept assuring me, but there were moments when I was in a really sad place with the story for so many reasons. It wasn't an easy book to write - emotionally, physically, or creatively.
In the midst of observing the world and coming to consciousness, I was becoming a writer, and what I wanted to put on the page were the stories of people who looked like me.
Sometimes you do have to laugh to keep from crying. And sometimes the world feels all right and good and kind of like it's becoming nice again around you. And you realize it, and realize how happy you are in it, and you just gotta laugh.
I don't want anyone to walk through the world feeling invisible ever again.
The strength of my mother is something I didn't pay attention to for so long. Here she was, this single mom, who was part of the Great Migration, who was part of a Jim Crow south, who said, 'I'm getting my kids out of here. I'm creating opportunities for these young people by any means necessary.'
I would have written 'Brown Girl Dreaming' if no one had ever wanted to buy it, if it went nowhere but inside a desk drawer that my own children pulled out one day to find a tool for survival, a symbol of how strong we are and how much we've come through.
My failures may be my greatest successes. It is in failure that I have often drawn closer to God, learn to depend more on Him than myself, gained self-knowledge, and seen things in their right perspective.
I don't think fairness means that you give equal time to every point of view no matter how marginal. You weigh the sides, you do some truth-testing, you apply judgment to them.
It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.
Everyone is influenced by everybody but you bring it down home the way you feel it.
Learn to humble yourself, you are but earth and clay.
No obligation to do the impossible is binding.
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