“Once I overcame breast cancer, I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“There is no fear when you choose love. The more you choose love, the more love is in your life. It gets easier and easier.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“To be completely stripped bare of any image power or my hair. To step onstage and get the response that I got blew any problems I had about self-image out the door.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to be a certain way. Be unique. Be what you feel.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“People ask me, ‘Is being a parent the be-all, end-all?’ And I say, ‘Oh, it definitely is up to the person, and it is difficult, it can be very difficult, and it can be extremely healing.’ That’s what I have found, that the children are mirrors. Everyone is a mirror, but children especially because they’re day and night and all day long.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I think being a parent is knowing how to love. Sometimes love is discipline, sometimes it’s humor, sometimes it’s listening.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I’m very fortunate that I have a wonderful family around me and loved ones.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Instead of taking five or six of the prescriptions, I decided to go a natural route and smoke marijuana.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Chemotherapy tests your sanity.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I’ve sold my soul for freedom. It’s lonely but it’s sweet.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“There will always be someone else with a different view than you. I appreciate them and would never say that they are wrong. I hope that they would give me that courtesy also.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I’m exploring the maturity, the wisdom that just comes from having gone around the sun 50 times. My experience is, ‘Oh, I’m never really going to get it right. I’m never going to get it done. But that’s not the point here.’ The point is the journey.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“On the road, as a ‘rock star,’ there’s superficial attention and adulation is thrown at you for a couple of hours – then you’re alone in your room and it’s lonely.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I think it has done us more harm believing in the huge differences between left and right, Democrat and Republican.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Laughing is a medicine. It releases this amazing stuff.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I can look at cancer as a disease that picks me out and ‘why me,’ or I can look at it through love and say, ‘This is a wake-up call. This is my body telling me: ‘Hey, you’re out of balance here. It’s time to get in line with yourself.’”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I’m for gay marriage, because I’m for gay divorce.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“There’s a point when your tape of life runs off the reel and there’s this stillness of your own – I got to know myself.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“It was tough being a single mom. It was tough being in a divorce with children. Very, very hard.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I’m so close to Heaven, this Hell cannot be mine.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Love is never wrong.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“The songs are inspired by my experiences. Sometimes they are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I feel my heart break to see a nation ripped apart by it’s own greatest strength – it’s diversity.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I definitely feel we’re moving forward. There’s a lot more understanding… there’s less fear and we’re working on there being less hatred.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I stand before you a totally healthy person.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I’ve been a rock star since you were very young. But I’ve never encountered anything as powerful as cancer.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“My friends have always told me that rock stardom was wasted on me.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Our great Constitution challenges us to grow constantly.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I kind of thought when I was 30 that you’re as good as your going to get. And that’s not true.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I am a songwriter. I do get to put my personal experiences in song.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I have found that I’m just political just by being who I am.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“There’s been so many different types of musicals, and it’s a funny genre because there’s a fine line between clever and stupid. It really takes a genius to know how to do it.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I write songs for people who drive in cars. I really do.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“There are many plant medicines that are available to us that have a lot of stigma around them that I hope, in the future, our medical community can look at, because I would absolutely go to those alternatives first before I went back to Western medicine.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“My kids and I love to listen to Bill Cosby.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“We all want to judge; it’s an intrinsic part of our society and human nature. I’m not surprised that talent shows are hits, but I’m glad some of them aren’t so brutal.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I believed in Obama for social issues. I believe he brought our nation together and healed our racial divide. Martin Luther King’s dream came true when he was elected. That’s huge.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“In country music, there are certain female artists, like Gretchen Wilson, where you’re going to find lesbians because they’re responding to that more aggressive side.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Your own personal health is your own personal choice, all the way down the line.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“My belief is that cancer comes from inside you and so much of it has to do with the environment of your body. It’s the stress that will turn that gene on or not.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Realizing I was gay was a long sort of waking up.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“The subject and the reality of having children came at the height of my career.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I would never say I had a bad childhood at all.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I think I’ve been on a path ever since I was born, a path of high stress. I put myself, my career, it was a big old juicy carrot right in front of me for all of my life.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Cancer’s like the ultimate excuse. Who’s gonna say, ‘Oh, no, you have to show up for this one?’ ‘Hey, I got cancer. I can’t be there.’ It’s the ultimate eraser.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“What people don’t get is that hair is such a big part of our identity.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I don’t have a bucket list because it is my dedication to live every day of my life there. I don’t have a bucket list because I’m doing it that day. I don’t want to go to bed and say, ‘Oh, I wish I had done this.’”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I’m one of those people that will say, ‘My cancer was a gift.’”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Video is a funny thing. It’s one thing to be an artist, singer-songwriter, and use words and create pictures in people’s minds. And then be asked to do video for it, to actually give a certain visual for your song.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“When you realize that we’re the spirit that’s in our bodies and our bodies are like the vehicles that take us around, you realize that you have to take care of that body.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I have days when I say, ‘I’m going to have five chocolate chip cookies today.’ I’ll have a salad every day but every week I have a cheat day.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Weight isn’t a factor in nutritional health.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“When I grew up, there were no songs about gay people.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I have a very strong opinions about health and our responsibility to our own health, and I will always say what I feel.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Gay people are born everyday. You will never legislate that away.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“All men, and women, and everything in between are created equal.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“My wife works harder than anyone else with the children around the house. I make the money, sure, but she does everything else.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“My ultimate joy and happiness is being a wife and mother.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I don’t think anyone masters parenthood.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Christmas comes during a season when the Earth is in its darkest time. It’s a holiday for the family and for everyone.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“When you grow up in one town and your life revolves around it, you are very aware of any darkness on the edge of town. That’s because it’s scary and it’s inviting.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I adopted a healthier diet. I take at least a tablespoon of apple-cider vinegar a day. It’s an old wives’ tale, but it really is one of the best things you can put in your mouth.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Our society, where we are right now, our minds are junkyards. We watch TV and sit on the computer all day and barely have an original thought.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I’m not one for big public displays of affection, anyway. Straight, gay, whatever.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“What I do believe in is other worlds and spirits. There is some other power in control – levels of energy that perhaps we don’t see.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I can be a rock star with a television show and still have a self-esteem problem. So it’s nice to have your dad go, ‘Hey Melissa, I’m proud of you – you’re doing good.’”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I tell people that anything that could ever happen to you on stage has happened to me. My clothes have fallen off. I’ve fallen off the stage. I’ve gotten sick – anything.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I’ve worked since I was 11 years old, playing music and following the dream, and shaking and moving and doing it. And then, you have cancer and it was like ‘Ooooohh.’ It was like a big eraser. It was the only thing in my life that had ever made me just stop.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I always tell people I’m grateful for my cancer diagnosis because it was the greatest gift because it completely changed my life. I was able to stop and let my whole life and world just crash over me like a wave. And I stood there and went, ‘Wow.’ And for the first time, I stopped everything. I had to.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“I have always loved Broadway.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“Life happens, and I write about it wherever I am.”
― Melissa Etheridge
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