{"author":"Vironika Tugaleva","author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva","total_quotes":275,"quotes":[{"text":"Our culture has bred consumers and addicts. We eat too much, buy too much, and want too much. We set ourselves on the fruitless mission of filling the gaping hole within us with material things. Blindly, we consume more and more, believing we are hungry for more food, status, or money, yet really we are hungry for connection.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["addiction","connection","consumerism","hope","love","materialism","spirituality"],"id":2553,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"No one is too poor to give a smile - a gift, often, of greater consequence than any sum of money.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["acts-of-kindness","kindness","smile","smiling"],"id":3333,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"There is a difference between judgment and feedback. Your critics use you as a mirror for their own hidden darkness. Your teachers hold up a mirror to yours.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["criticism","critics","dealing-with-criticism","feedback","judgment","learning","teacher","teaching"],"id":3458,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"My job, my only job here in this moment, is to love myself and, by extension, to love others. My job is just to live and to realize that to live is to love.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["life","love","love-people","love-yourself","relationships","self-acceptance","self-love","wisdom"],"id":4237,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"There are few things more powerful than people united. What they unite over is not what matters. ... The most important aspect is remembering our existing connection, and, through that, allowing ourselves to feel at peace.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["coming-together","connection","love","peace","people","people-united","unity"],"id":5013,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"Love is not the opposite of power. Love IS power. Love is the strongest power there is.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["love","power","power-of-love","powerful","unconditional-love"],"id":7540,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"When I'm triggered, I think, 'This will last forever' or 'What if this lasts forever?' I get thoughts about how I should give up, run away, hide, protect myself. These thoughts, I cannot change. What I can change is how I respond to them. Will I unconditionally believe these ideas, or will I accept them as side effects of the temporary experience of pain? Will I act on each thought that arises in the burning fire, or will I hold myself gently and say, 'It'll be okay. I know it hurts. I love you'? My power lies in these choices.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["choice","emotional-healing","emotional-triggers","emotions","healing","healing-the-past","mind","pain","ptsd","self-healing","self-love","self-soothing","suffering","vulnerability"],"id":11872,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"These times are hard, but I won't walk away jaded, darker, different. I feel. I cry to heal. If you saw me in those moments, maybe you'd think I was a mess. But I don't call it a mess. I call it strength.Real strength isn't about building walls. Real strength is about staying open, no matter what. It's about taking life—with all the pleasures that fade and all the pain that sticks around for too long—and not shutting down, not closing down, not building up those walls.Resilience isn't hard, impenetrable, iron. Resilience is flexible, soft, warm. Stay strong. The real kind of strong. Don't let your automatic mind reflexes make you jump away from pain and towards pleasure. Make choices. See clearly. And never, ever, stop feeling.Don't go numb. The world, even with all its horror, is too beautiful to miss.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["emotions","feeling","feelings","healing","mess","self-love","self-protection","strength","strong","vulnerability"],"id":12851,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"One of the most difficult things I ever did was learn to support myself through my whole range of emotional experiences without running away.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["acceptance","healing","self-love","self-support","vulnerability"],"id":13647,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"To be hurt is, sometimes, a lucky thing—a fortunate interruption along a road that otherwise may have ended in blindly hurting others. When we heal from being hurt by a person, we realize the importance of not hurting people. Perhaps it is not the most fun way to learn this lesson, but it is a method of life's teachings nonetheless.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["awareness","healing","pain","trauma"],"id":15462,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":275,"pages":28,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}