The Choice

by Edith Eger

We are all likely to be victimized in some way in the course of our lives. At some point we will suffer some kind of affliction or calamity or abuse, caused by circumstances or people or institutions over which we have little or no control. This is life. And this is victimization. It comes from the outside.

In contrast, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization. We develop a victim’s mind—a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries. We become our own jailors

I also want to say that there is no hierarchy of suffering.

I did not yet know that nightmares know no geography, that guilt and anxiety wander borderless.

We can’t choose to vanish the dark, but we can choose to kindle the light.

NO ONE HEALS in a straight line.