Mel > Mel's Quotes

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys."
Rhys clinked his glass against mine. “To the stars who listen— and the dreams that are answered.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“There are good days and hard days for me—even now. Don’t let the hard days win.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“You don’t stop loving someone just because they hurt you,” he said. “It would certainly make things easier if you did.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn Trilogy

“Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don’t know how to read.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn Trilogy

“She had taken many more punches to both body and soul than anyone should ever have to endure. But she had been able to rebel every time.”
― Steig Larson, The Girl Who Played with Fire

“Trauma is a memory hog,
It gobbles up all available space
in the brain,
leaves little room to mark
daily happenstances,
or even routine injuries
which are less than
life-threatening.”
― Nikki Grimes, Ordinary Hazards

“TRAUMA STEALS YOUR VOICE

People get so tired of asking you what's wrong and you've run out of nothings to tell them.

You've tried and they've tried, but the words just turn to ashes every time they try to leave your mouth.

They start as fire in the pit of your stomach, but come out in a puff of smoke.

You are not you anymore.

And you don't know how to fix this.

The worst part is...you don't even know how to try.”
― nikitta gill

“Once the individual has learned to dissociate in the context of trauma, he or she may subsequently transfer this response to other situations and it may be repeated thereafter arbitrarily in a wide variety of circumstances. The dissociation therefore “destabilizes adaptation and becomes pathological.”[6] It is important for the psychiatrist to accurately diagnose DDs and also to place the symptoms in perspective with regard to trauma history.”
― Julie P. Gentile

“Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom.

But the personality formed in the environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the task of early adulthood――establishing independence and intimacy――burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition and in memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships.

She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams healing can begin.”
― Danielle Bernock, Emerging With Wings: A True Story of Lies, Pain, And The LOVE that Heals

“The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“-If I somehow possessed a set of videotapes that contained all the most significant events of your childhood, in their entirety, would you want to see them?

-Absolutely. Right this very second.

-But why? Don't you think some of the tapes would be very sad?

-Most of them, yes. But if I could see them, then I could have them in my brain like regular memories-horrible memories, yes, but regular memories, not sinister little ghosts in my head that pop out of some part of me I don't even know, and take the rest of me away. Do you know what I mean?

-I think so, If you have to remeber, you'd rather do it in the front of your brain than in the back.”
― Martha Stout, The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness

“When you’re a weird kid, you learn to put guardrails around the things you love. You keep them hidden heart-deep, lest someone try to take them, mock them, or co-opt them out of cruelty or just plain clumsiness.”
― Pam Grossman, Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power

“Perfectionism is the unparalleled defense for emotionally abandoned children. The existential unattainability of perfection saves the child from giving up, unless or until, scant success forces him to retreat into the depression of a dissociative disorder, or launches him hyperactively into an incipient conduct disorder. Perfectionism also provides a sense of meaning and direction for the powerless and unsupported child. In the guise of self-control, striving to be perfect offers a simulacrum of a sense of control. Self-control is also safer to pursue because abandoning parents typically reserve their severest punishment for children who are vocal about their negligence.”
― Pete Walker

“I survived because I remained soft, because I listened, because I wrote. Because I huddled close to my truth, protected it like a tiny flame in a terrible storm. Hold up your head when the tears come, when you are mocked, insulted, questioned, threatened, when they tell you you are nothing, when your body is reduced to openings. The journey will be longer than you imagined, trauma will find you again and again. Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift. Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy, and freedom. Fight because it is your life. Not anyone else’s. I did it, I am here. Looking back, all the ones who doubted or hurt or nearly conquered me faded away, and I am the only one standing. So now, the time has come. I dust myself off, and go on.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
― Margaret Atwood