Independence

I am off the island heading for the states this morning. I leave you with a few photos from our Nicaragua Independence Day parade.

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?”
― Anaïs Nin

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
“He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt.”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan
“I am not an angel,” I asserted; “and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“With the spread of conformity and image-driven superficiality, the allure of an individuated woman in full possession of herself and her powers will prove irresistible. We were born for plenitude and inner fulfillment.”
― Elizabeth Prioleau, Seductress – Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love “We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence.”
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember
“Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“Independence is a complex word in a foreign tongue. To resist occupation, whether you’re a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democracy and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain.”
― Barbara Kingsolver
“Confidence is knowing who you are and not changing it a bit because of someone’s version of your reality is not their reality.”
― Shannon L. Alder

What does independence mean to you?