The Resilient Mind - True Love Liberates - Maya Angelou

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalExplore tools from past guests of the podcast. Some links below are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you:💓 HeartMath: https://www.heartmath.com/resilient🧠 Muse: https://choosemuse.com/resilientmind🌿 Brain Ritual: https://www.brainritual.com/THERESILIENTMIND🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love because that liberates. Love liberates. It doesn't just hold. That's ego. Love liberates. When my son was born, I was 17. My mother had a huge house, 14-room house.

At 17, I was 17. I went to her and said, I'm leaving. She asked me, you're leaving my house? And she had living health. I said, yes, I found a job, and I've got a room with kilking privileges down the hall. And the landlady will be the babysitter. She asked me, you're leaving my house. I said, yes, ma'am, and you're taking the baby.

I said, yes. She said, all right, remember this. When you step over my door sill, you've been raised. you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't let anybody raise you and make you change. And remember this, you can always come home. I went home every time life slammed me down

and made me call it uncle. I went home with my baby. My mother never once acted as I told you so. She said, oh, baby's home. Oh, my darling, my mom's going to. can cook you something, mother's gonna make this for you. Love. She liberated me to life.

She continued to do that. When my son may have been five years old, my mother would pick him up all the time and feed him. I went to her once a month, and she would cook for me. So one day I went to her house and she'd cooked red rice, which I loved. After we finished evening, We walked down the hill and she started across the street. She said, wait a minute, baby.

I was 22 years old. She said, wait a minute, baby. You know, I think you're the greatest woman I've ever met. She said, Mary McLeod Bethune, Eleanor Roosevelt, and my mother. You're in that category. Then she said, give me a kiss. I gave her a kiss and I got onto the streetcar. I can remember the way the sun fell on the slats of the wooden sea.

of the wooden seats. I sat there and I thought about her. I thought, suppose she's right. She's intelligent. And she says she's too mean to lie. So suppose I am going to be somebody. She released me. She freed me to say I may have something in me

that would be of value. Maybe not just to me. You see? That's love. And when she was in her final sickness, I went out to San Francisco, and the doctor said she had three weeks to live. I asked her, would you come to North Carolina? She said yes.

She had emphysema and lung cancer. I brought her to my home. She lived for a year and a half. And when she was finally, finally in extremists, she was on oxygen and finding cancer for her life. And I remembered her liberating me. And I said, I hope I'll be able to liberate her. She deserved that for me. She deserved a great daughter, and she got one.

So in her last day, I said, now I understand that some people need permission to go. As I understand it, you may have done what God put you here to do. You were a great worker. You must have been a great lover because a lot of men, and if I'm not wrong, maybe a couple of women, risked their lives to love you. You were a piss-poort mother of small children, but you were great mother of young adults. And if you need permission to go, I liberate you.

I went back to my house, and something said, go back. I was in my pajamas. I jumped in my car and ran, and the nurse said she's just gone. You see, love liberates. It doesn't bind. Love says, I love you. I love you if you're in China.

I love you if you're cross town. I love you if in Harlem. I love you. I would like to be near you. I'd like to have your arms around me. I'd like to hear your voice in my ear. But that's not possible now. So I love you.

Go. If I think of my life as a class and what I've really learned, I've learned a few things. First, I'm aware that I'm a child of God. It's such an amazing understanding to think that the it, which made fleas and mountains and rivers and stars, made me.

What I pray for is humility to know that there's something greater than I, then I have to know that the brute, the bigot, and the batterer are all children of God, whether they know it or not. And I'm supposed to treat them accordingly. And it's hard, and I blow it all the time. I'd like everybody to think of a statement by Terence. The statement is, I am a human being.

Nothing human can be alien to me. If you can internalize the least portion of that, you will never be able to say of an act, a criminal act, or I couldn't do that. No matter how heinous the crime, if a human being did it, you have to say, I have in me all the components that are in her or in him. I intend to use my energies constructively as opposed to destruction. If you can do that about the negative, just think what you can do about the positive.

If a human being dreams a great dream, dares to love somebody, if a human being dares to be Martin King or Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, or Malcolm X, if a human being dares to be bigger than the condition into which she or he was born. It means so can you. And so you can try to stretch, stretch, stretch yourself. So you can internalize, a homo son, humani nihi la me alia, I am a human being.

Nothing human can be alien to me. That's one thing I'm learning. Maybe the hardest part is if you teach, you have to live your teaching. You can't say you do not as I do, but do as I say. No, no. You have to say, I'm doing my best to live what I teach. I have a painting by Phoebe of a group that she calls Sister Suki's funeral. And they're all the women, there are about nine women,

and they all look like women in my grandmother's prayer meeting group. So whenever I'm obliged to do something, I take that painting, and I look at that painting, there's an empty chair. And I think, now, what would Grandma do? What would she say? I can almost hear her voice, say, now, sister, you know what's right. Just do right. You don't really have to ask anybody.

The truth is, right may not be expedient. It may not be profitable. But it will satisfy your soul. It brings you the kind of protection that bodyguards can't give you. Try to be all you can be, to be the best. human being you can be. Try to be that in your church, in your temple. Try to be that in your classroom.

Do it because it is right to do. You see? People will know you, and they will add their prayers to your life. They'll wish you well. I think if your name is mentioned and people say, oh, hell, oh damn. I think you're doing something wrong. But if your name is mentioning people say,

oh, she's so sweet, he's so nice. Oh, I love. Oh, God bless her. There you are. So try to live your life in a way that you will not regret years of useless virtue and inertia and timidity. Take up the battle.

Take it up. It's yours. This is your life. This is your world. I'll be leaving it long before you under the ordinary set of circumstances. You make your own choices. You can decide life isn't worth living. And that would be the worst thing you can do.

How do you know so far? Try it. So pick it up, pick up the battle and make it a better world. Just where you are. Yes. And it can be better. and it must be better, but it is up to us. Thank you for listening.

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