I offer you today this episode of “We Can Do Hard Things” with Sonya Renee Taylor. I read Sonya’s book, The Body Is Not An Apology, a while ago and her voice felt particularly revolutionary while I listened to it on my run today.
Here’s one quote that hit me in the chest that I want everyone to hear and read, though listen to the episode for the full context:
“No matter where you are on the ladder someone is below you. There is someone in this world that has a body that is deemed less valuable than yours. And every time you are like, I’m going to take another step, you are ensuring that they stay low too. That they stay lower than you. They have to. And so until you get off that ladder, we will continue to have a world of inequity where your body is valued more than my body. So if we say we’re about justice, if we say we’re about equality, if we say we want marginalization done away with, then we have got to do away with marginalization inside of ourselves. We have to get off the ladder. We can’t say I really want a world where all bodies are valued equally, but I got to figure out how to make my body better because those don’t go together. That’s a contradiction.”
-Sonya Renee Taylor
With Love,
Natalie