Ashley Judd Quotes

It's nice sometimes to open up the heart a little and let some hurt come in. It proves you're still alive.

I think grief is a step towards strength because it allows you to be porous and take everything in, and have it transform you. What will sit within you is despairing, but at least it's feeling. You're not numb. Grief is sort of the allowance of feeling.

When you feel good is when you're not afraid to feel the worst.

Showing your emotions is not a weakness.

Don't hold back from being an 'empath.' Don't be afraid of shedding your tears. Feel it. Feel the full extent of everything. It gives us strength.

If it's painful, you become willing not just to endure it but also to let it awaken your heart and soften you. You learn to embrace it.

We won't let ourselves feel our anger, rage, and pain. We push it down or anesthetize it through drugs, alcohol, shopping, or whatever we do in order not to feel it. When that memory and the associated feelings get lodged down there in our soul, the feelings are still there. They don't just magically go away. We have to give ourselves the opportunity to feel them.

It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles... It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch; to love and let go again and again.

No matter what feeling comes up - numbness, irritability, shame - if I let it arise and play itself through, I naturally open into wakefulness and care.

Every tear should live its purpose. Don't ever wipe the reason away.

I do my best to allow myself to really feel it [emotional pain]. Cry. Get all in it. Really experience my experience so that I may move through it. And talk about it. I try not to let anything get brushed over and swept under the rug.

There are really only two options - you can feel things, or you can shut down. But, once you decide to feel things, you don't get to pick and choose what you feel.

Sometimes this human stuff is slimy and pathetic...but better to feel it and talk about it and walk through it than to spend a lifetime being silently poisoned.

Accepting that we are angry is a healthy and appropriate response as long as we don't get stuck in it. Acknowledging it is one way of going through it.

Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, “All right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is".

I remember watching the mascara tears flood the ivories and I thought, "It's OK to be sad." I've been trained to love my darkness.

When we come into the present, we begin to feel the life around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding. We must have the courage to face whatever is present - our pain, our desires, our grief, our loss, our secret hopes our love - everything that moves us most deeply.

I am learning how to be angry and sad and lonely and joyful and excited and afraid and happy.

We cannot heal what we cannot feel.

I try to get through emotional pain and not go around it, it always ends sooner that way. I also use chocolate.

The hardest thing to remember is that what we each really want is the truth of our lives, good or bad. Not rocking the boat is an illusion that can only be maintained by the unspoken agreement not to feel and in the long run it never really works. Let go of saving the boat and save the passengers instead.

Your life's short, don't ever question the length / It's cool to cry, don't ever question your strength.

People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it.

In the past, I was definitely more apt to storing pain away and not worrying about it. But as I get older, it's really about figuring out how to process it, how to feel it, and then also how to use it in my art.