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.
Margaret TrudeauRead
Oh, am I a feminist? I usually say that I was an accidental feminist. Really, I was just being me.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the idea of identity and authenticity in feminism.
Margaret Trudeau expresses her understanding of feminism as a natural extension of her identity rather than an intentional label. She suggests that being true to oneself and standing for equality and women's rights can be an organic part of one's character, rather than a conscious effort to fit into the feminist movement.
In practice
In a discussion about women's rights at a social event.
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.
Don'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.
I tried to be a good wife, but I was lost in my gilded cage.
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.
Fourteen-year-old boys are not part of a well-regulated militia. Members of wacky religious cults are not part of a well-regulated militia. Permitting unregulated citizens to have guns is destroying the security of this free state.
My mother would write letters when I was away at camp and say, 'There's an Ann-shaped space around the house. Nobody fills an Ann-shaped space except an Ann.' I'm convinced we all have a God-shaped space in us, and until we fill that space with God, we'll never know what it is to be whole.
The Way of Heaven does not complete, and yet it skillfully achieves victory. It does not speak, and yet it skillfully responds to things. It comes to you without your invitation.
Lukewarm people call 'radical' what Jesus expected of all His followers.
According to their [Newton and his followers] doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making, so imperfect, according to these gentlemen; that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as clockmaker mends his work.
Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly color. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.
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