You can't fix yourself out of a mental health issue. You can't wake up and say, 'Today I'm not being depressed!' It's a process to get well, but there is recovery.
I tried to be a good wife, but I was lost in my gilded cage.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the struggle of feeling trapped in a seemingly perfect life while longing for personal freedom.
Margaret Trudeau's quote conveys the idea that despite her efforts to fulfill her role as a good wife, she felt confined and restricted by her circumstances, which she describes metaphorically as a 'gilded cage.' This suggests a beautiful but imprisoning situation where external appearances of success and happiness mask deeper feelings of discontent and loss of identity. It highlights the importance of personal freedom and self-discovery even within conventional roles.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a women's rights seminar, one might use this quote to emphasize the necessity of self-identity in relationships.
More from Margaret Trudeau
All quotes βDon't feel badly when you take off work to go for a run, to go for a walk; don't feel badly to take time to play with your children, to be part of their lives. Work is important, but you can't work at your best unless you're a whole person.
The label 'wife of the prime minister' is like a giant signboard pointing at my head from a Monty Python sketch. But I am not Mrs. Prime Minister. I'm a human being.
Do you know what prepares you for the mental hospital? Being a prime minister's wife.
Oh, am I a feminist? I usually say that I was an accidental feminist. Really, I was just being me.
I tried during the 1974 campaign to show my husband not as the aloof intellectual people think he is, but the warm, passionate man I know. But the day after the election - after I'd worked so hard - I was put back on the shelf. I was devastated.
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Women of color have always been kind of boxed in by the idea that the more you talk about the misogyny of your own community, the more you make that community look bad.
People who have no secrets from each other never want for a subject of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back, neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of their heart, without consideration they say just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God.
Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely necessary. What do you have to offer me I can't find otherwise except humiliation? Which I no longer need.
I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.
We must celebrate difference until difference doesn't make a difference in the way we treat each other.
It's a shame you left without a word, you know. She was just beginning to trust you before that. Before you got angry. Before you ran off. Just like every other man in her life. Lusting after her, full of sweet words, then just walking away. Leaving her alone. Good thing she's used to it by now, isn't it? Otherwise you might have hurt her. Otherwise you just might have broken that poor girl's heart