Glow (The Plated Prisoner, #4)

by Raven Kennedy

That’s the thing with trauma to the body—it shows up instantly. In breaks and bruises, in burns and in blood. But the trauma on the inside, that’s harder to see. It creeps around your mind, poisons you with disquiet. It can hit you out of nowhere, debilitating and ruinous. There are no marks visible for those. None, save the shadows in your eyes.

we aren’t strong because of our trauma. We were always strong to begin with. We just needed to figure it out for ourselves.

You never notice what’s keeping you balanced until you realize you’re not standing straight anymore.

I’ve always been more passive in life. I think passivity is often mistaken for weakness. Really, it’s just a different way to cope. To survive. The safest way I learned to react to situations was to endure. To let things blow over. To please. To peace keep. To constantly regulate my own reactions and thoughts and emotions so that the tyrant could be appeased into a lesser form of abuse.

The abuse came in shades of gray. Some were darker and more noticeable than others. Some, I probably haven’t even noticed yet. My healing from this isn’t going to happen overnight.