Lies We Tell Ourselves

Other people will try to decide things for you, she says. They'll try to tell you who you are. Remember, no matter what they say, you're the only who really decides.

Sarah's right. We punish ourselves so much in our own imaginations. We convince ourselves everything we do, everything we think, is wrong. For eighteen years I've believed what other people told me about what was right and what was wrong. From now. I'm deciding.

That lovely face sets off a fire inside me that isn't ever supposed to burn.

What if this—this rule that says what I did in the back room that day is a terrible sin—what if that’s just a rule some old white man made up, too?

The lipstick is a dark, dark red. The kind Hollywood stars wear. Not a shade good girls in Davisburg wear to the movies. I try it on anyway and gaze at my reflection in the mirror. I don't look sick. I certainly don't look like that kind of girl. What does that kind of girl look like, anyway?

Now you listen and you listen good." [Mama's] voice is so quiet it scares me. "Nobody's going to let us be anything. We have just as much right to this world as they have, and we are not going to wait around for them to give us permission.

The values many of us take for granted today are the result of hard-fought battles that happened years, decades and centuries ago. Working alongside the civil right leaders we revere today, lik Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of now-forgotten activists who sacrificed everything they had so people today could live the way we do. Every generation needs to remember that--and to remember that it's up to us to make sacrifices of our own for the ones who will come next.

Lie #1 There's no need to be afraid.

This is who I am. And I like me this way. And I think God just might like me this way, too.

Lie #6 I'm not strong enough for this.

Lie #4 I'm not lonely.

Lie #3 I don't care what they think of me.

Other people will always try to decide things for you,” she says. “They’ll try to tell you who you are. Remember, no matter what they say, you’re the one who really decides.

What about our right to an education?" Linda's quote [in the Davisburg Gazette] reads. "No one talks about that. The colored people aren't the only ones who should have rights.

Lie #2 I'm sure I'm doing the right thing.

And I think I know what Sarah meant when she said I’m the one who really decides.