When you take a walk with Anais Nin

Before we jump to some beautiful thoughts of Anais Nin, a short note from the Anais Nin foundation with a link to full bio:

"During her 63 years of highly personal and yet ultimately public writing, Anais Nin forged a style of expression that befits the 21st century.  She seemed to foresee our modern era of Internet communication, even wishing for what she called a “café in space” where she could keep in touch with others.  Nin believed that consciousness is a stream of images and words that flow from us as long as we live and something to be shared." (more)

There are moments when we feel alone with our situations and emotions, but it’s enough to read some thoughts written and lived by Frida Kahlo, Anais Nin, Maya Angelou, Mary Oliver, Audre Lorde, and so many others to understand we are all going similar paths… To recognize ourselves in those words and find strength and inspiration when needed. We are not alone. We are all together. No matter the distance. No matter decades. No matter age. 

We'd love to see Anais in our Pinafore Sky Blue Dress. We hope she'd love it just as much. 

Please, enjoy the walk through the wisdom and insights of Anais Nin, one of our favorite essayists below:

" There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.”

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“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvellous that only the marvellous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvellous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”

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“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”

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“I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality, those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my ''idea of them.”

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“The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”

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“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): the absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.” 

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“From the backstabbing co-worker to the meddling sister-in-law, you are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life or you can choose happiness instead. Take control and choose to focus on what is important in your life. Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.”

Thank you, Anais Nin, for inspiration. Let May become the month of femininity!