The Island of Missing Trees

by Elif Shafak

If families resemble trees, as they say, arborescent structures with entangled roots and individual branches jutting out at awkward angles, family traumas are like thick, translucent resin dripping from a cut in the bark. They trickle down generations.

sometimes what you called a perpetrator was just another name for an unacknowledged victim.

Some day this pain will be useful to you.