The biggest problem that women have is being ambivalent about their own power, ... We should be comfortable with the idea of wielding power. We shouldn't feel that it detracts from our femininity.
Elizabeth WurtzelRead
The men have piled up in my past, have fallen trenchantly through my life, like an avalanche that doesn't mean to kill but is going to bury me alive just the same.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the overwhelming impact of past experiences and relationships that can feel suffocating.
In this quote, Elizabeth Wurtzel expresses how past relationships and experiences have accumulated in her life, creating a burden that weighs heavily on her. The metaphor of an avalanche signifies that, although these events may not have been intended to harm her, they still threaten to overwhelm and suffocate her existence, illustrating the complexity of dealing with the emotional aftermath of one's past.
Themes
PastBurdenRelationshipsEmotionsAvalanche
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about mental health awareness, this quote could be shared to illustrate the impact of past traumas.
More from Elizabeth Wurtzel
All quotes →Whenever I talk to anyone I care about, I am always seeking approval. There is always a pleading lilt in my voice that demands love. Even the people I work with, the ones I am supposed to have a professional relationship with, all business, get pulled into my need. I can't help it. I want to be adored.
Elizabeth WurtzelRead
Getting help for substance abuse can be reduced to the deceptively simple focus of ‘keeping away from the dope.’ But what does getting help with depression mean? Learning to keep away from your own mind?
Elizabeth WurtzelRead
Taking a hypersensitive approach to life had come to seem so much more pure and honest then joining the ranks of the numb masses who could let it all slide by. What I stopped realizing was that if you feel everything intensely, ultimately you feel nothing at all. Everything registers at the same decibel.
Elizabeth WurtzelRead
It's being a grown up, which I never figured out how to do, scrubbing the tub, and remembering to eat and shampoo my hair. It's the basics: I can write a whole book, but I cannot handle the basics.
Elizabeth WurtzelRead
But day after day of depression, the kind that doesn’t seem to merit carting me off to a hospital but allows me to sit here on this stoop in summer camp as if I were normal, day after day wearing down everybody who gets near me. My behavior seems, somehow, not acute enough for them to know what to do with me, though I’m just enough of a mess to be driving everyone around me crazy.
Elizabeth WurtzelRead
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