Top 50 Sonya Renee Taylor Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Radical self-love summons us to be our most expansive selves, knowing that the more unflinchingly powerful we allow ourselves to be, the more unflinchingly powerful others feel capable of being. Our unapologetic embrace of our bodies gives others permission to unapologetically embrace theirs.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

2. “Radical self-love demands that we see ourselves and others in the fullness of our complexities and intersections and that we work to create space for those intersections.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

3. “When we liberate ourselves from the expectation that we must have all things figured out, we enter a sanctuary of empathy.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

4. “Systems do not maintain themselves; even our lack of intervention is an act of maintenance. Every structure in every society is upheld by the active and passive assistance of other human beings.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

5. “To be fear-facing is to learn the distinction between fear and danger. It is to look directly at the source of the fear and assess if we are truly in peril or if we are simply afraid of the unknown.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

6. “Phrases like “Get over it!” and “It’s all in your head” are rooted in ableism. They are body terrorism against non-normative brains. Let’s stop telling people to “get over it” and start asking, “How can I help you heal?”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

7. “Equally damaging is our insistence that all bodies should be healthy. Health is not a state we owe the world. We are not less valuable, worthy, or lovable because we are not healthy. Lastly, there is no standard of health that is achievable for all bodies.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

8. “We humans are masters of distraction, using makeup, weight loss, and a finely curated self-image to avoid being present to our fears, even as they build blockades around our most potent desires.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

9. “Concepts like self-acceptance and body neutrality are not without value. When you have spent your entire life at war with your body, these models offer a truce. But you can have more than a cease-fire. You can have radical self-love because you are already radical self-love.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

10. “When our personal value is dependent on the lesser value of other bodies, radical self-love is unachievable.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

11. “Contrary to purpose, natural intelligence does not require we do anything to achieve it. Natural intelligence imbues us with all we need at this exact moment to manifest the highest form of ourselves, and we don’t have to figure out how to get it. We arrived on this planet with this source material already present.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

12. “Living in a female body, a Black body, an aging body, a fat body, a body with mental illness is to awaken daily to a planet that expects a certain set of apologies to already live on our tongues. There is a level of “not enough” or “too much” sewn into these strands of difference.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

13. “When we decide that people’s bodies are wrong because we don’t understand them, we are trying to avoid the discomfort of divesting from an entire body-shame system.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

14. “The work is to crumble the barriers of injustice and shame leveled against us so that we might access what we have always been, because we will, if unobstructed, inevitably grow into the purpose for which we were created: our own unique version of that oak tree.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

15. “Natasha, your body is not an apology. It is not something you give to someone to say, ‘Sorry for my disability.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

16. “Our disconnection, trauma, lack of resources, lack of compassion, fear, greed, and ego are the sources of our contributions to human suffering, not our bodies. We can accept humans and their bodies without understanding “why” they love, think, move, or look the way they do. Contrary to common opinion, freeing ourselves from the need to understand everything can bring about a tremendous amount of peace.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

17. “Radical Reflection The voice of doubt, shame, and guilt blaring in our heads is not our voice. It is a voice we have been given by a society steeped in shame. It is the “outside voice. “Our authentic voice, our “inside voice,” is the voice of radical self-love!”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

18. “Unlearning is challenging. Do not expect neat, tidy resolutions, or assume that we will instantly fix the world’s ills in a single dialogue. We can, however, get closer to those goals if we are willing to be uncomfortable.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

19. “Natural intelligence intends that every living thing become the highest form of itself and designs us accordingly.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

20. “Racism, sexism, ableism, homo- and transphobia, ageism, fatphobia are algorithms created by humans’ struggle to make peace with the body. A radical self-love world is a world free from the systems of oppression that make it difficult and sometimes deadly to live in our bodies.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

21. “Dismantling oppression and our role in it demands that we explore where we have been complicit in the system of body terrorism while employing the same compassion we needed to explore our complicity in our internalized body shame.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

22. “Too often, self-acceptance is used as a synonym for acquiescence. We accept the things we cannot change.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

23. “We practice self-acceptance when we have grown tired of self-hatred but can’t conceive of anything beyond a paltry tolerance of ourselves.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

24. “Body terrorism is a hideous tower whose primary support beam is the belief that there is a hierarchy of bodies. We uphold the system by internalizing this hierarchy and using it to situate our own value and worth in the world.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

25. “Think of body shame like the layers of an onion. For decades in our own lives and for centuries in civilization, we have been taught to judge and shame our bodies and to consequently judge and shame others. Getting to our inherent state of radical self-love means peeling away those ancient, toxic messages about bodies. It is like returning the world’s ugliest shame sweater back to the store where it was purchased and coming out wearing nothing but a birthday suit of radical self-love.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

26. “Being different is difficult in a world that tells us there is a “normal.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

27. “Consider this hypothesis: when we don’t see ourselves reflected in the world around us, we make judgments about that absence. Invisibility is a statement.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

28. “For most humans, transformation does not seem achievable from the distant shores of another person’s life. From far away, transformation looks like a miracle, or the result of magical powers possessed by the transformed person. Transformation is not magic. It’s hard work. But it is also doable work. When we can see another person’s labor toward their transformation, we know it is not some secret sauce but instead a daily commitment to a new way of life.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

29. “We have the power to change the narrative of body shame in our lives. We are not bound to the tales of teasing, and criticism we were subjected to as children. The good news is we are the authors of our own lives.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

30. “Women deserve better than organizations bearing the names of racist rapists funding million dollar campaigns on subway trains. These wealthy middle aged white men tell us what to do with our bodies while they wage wars and kill other people’s babies.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

31. “But why do we have to be all radical about it?” To answer this question is to further distinguish radical self-love from its fickle cousins, self-confidence and self-esteem, or its scrappy kid sister, self-acceptance.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

32. “As a nine-year-old, I was sorry for everything. “Sonie, you left the refrigerator open!” “Sorry.” “Sonya, why is your coat on the couch?” “Sorry.” “Sonya, did you get grape jelly on the white pantsuit I paid good money for?” “Sorry, sorry, sorry... ” A litany of apologies for my ever clumsy, messy, forgetful self, who spilled evidence of such all over the house. “Sorry” was my way of gathering up the spill.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

33. “Think of radical self-love as resistance training against our decades-old, tight, calcified thoughts. Adopting actions that promote radical self-love is comparable to working a muscle that has not been moved in years. It’s going to be sore and tender. You are going to be tired. But the exhaustion and frustration will lessen over time, and there will be ease where there once was pain.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

34. “An acorn does not have to say, ‘I intend to become an oak tree.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

35. “Making peace with your body is your mighty act of revolution. It is your contribution to a changed planet where we might all live unapologetically in the bodies we have.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

36. “Radical self-love invites us to love our bodies in a way that transforms how we understand and accept the bodies of others. This is not to say that we magically like everyone. It simply means we have debates and disagreements about ideas and character, not about bodies.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

37. “Living in a society structured to profit from our self-hate creates a dynamic in which we are so terrified of being ourselves that we adopt terror-based ways of being in our bodies. All this is fueled by a system that makes large quantities of money off our shame and bias. These experiences are not divergent but complementary.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

38. “Our inherent sense of radical self-love doesn’t speak to us with cruelty or viciousness. Radical self-love does not malign our gender, sexuality, race, disability, weight, age, acne, scars, illnesses. A world of body terrorism that impugns us because of our identities is the only thing that would dare speak to us with such malice. Just.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

39. “An acorn does not have to say, ‘I intend to become an oak tree’. Natural intelligence intends that every living thing become the highest form of itself and designs us accordingly.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

40. “Radical Reflection Say it again, for the folks in the bleachers: You are not your thoughts! That said, avoiding your thoughts will not help you train your brain to think new ones. You must look at them with gentle kindness and say, “Thank you for sharing.“ And with love, release them.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

41. “Our beliefs about bodies disproportionately impact those whose race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and age deviate from our default notions. The further from the default, the greater the impact. We are all affected – but not equally.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

42. “Our responsibility to humanity is to unearth the ways in which we have been sabotaging the blueprints and thwarting the radical self-love efforts of others.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

43. “Terrorism is defined as “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.”39 It takes no more than a brief review of the historic and present-day examples of media manipulation and legislative oppression to acknowledge that we are indeed being coerced into body shame for both economic and political reasons.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

44. “It is considered normal for women and girls in the United States to have hair, a reality shaped to varying degrees by the default of Westernized beauty standards. In Western societies hair is often tied to notions of femininity, beauty and gender. Having hair is what is expected of a “normal” woman or girl. Of course, there is an endless screed of rules governing our notions of normal hair. One cannot have too much hair or too little.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

45. “Although well-intentioned, not seeing color is ultimately a reflection of our personal challenges around navigating difference.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

46. “Like many people, he felt that his intention should have absolved him from his impact.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

47. “There is gorgeous potential and heinous instinct in us all.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

48. “Depression, bipolar disorder, and other examples of neurodivergence7 are stigmatized because we are unwilling to extend the same care and treatment to our brains that we afford our bodies. If I broke my arm and never went to a see a doctor, not only would I be in extreme pain but the people in my life would be incensed by such a reckless choice. Yet we make statements like “It’s all in your head” all the time, minimizing the experiences of our brains and neglecting their care.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

49. “I learn how to listen to my body. I must listen or I will die. In the water, I must learn the difference between fear and danger.”

— Sonya Renee Taylor

50. “Choosing a mantra is about finding a phrase or word we desire to live by. It should make us uncomfortable. It should make us think, “How dare I believe such an audacious thing about myself?”

— Sonya Renee Taylor