Childhood Abuse Quotes

“You can recognize survivors by their creativity. In soulful, insightful, gentle, and nurturing creations, they often express the inner beauty they brought out of childhood storms.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse: Tips to Change Child Abuse Effects

“When you feel caught in the web of childhood abuse, find words to describe it. Write them. Say them. Express them. In safe places, with safe people.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse: Tips to Change Child Abuse Effects

“Stuffing our memories might become familiar over the years, but it requires a mental vigilance that separates us from our inner world. It's building our lives making sure we never step on any path that might lead us to the tender and scary places we carry within us. We don't dare explore the unknown. We can't allow new possibilities. And yet, those are the very paths connected to the core of who we are beyond our abuse.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse: Tips to Change Child Abuse Effects

“Logic becomes a loud voice when the wall of our past abuse begin to crack with awareness. But that's our adult speaking. The child within, who had the experience, talks to us through flashes of insights.
Trust your perceptions. They are a powerful guide in healing.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse: Tips to Change Child Abuse Effects

“Sometimes, during our healing journeys, those closest to us can’t help even though we all wish it could be that way. Allow those moments to guide you to different, empowering choices.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse: Tips to Change Child Abuse Effects

“When we learn to recognize the unique quality of Memory-Dreams, we are empowered. The abused child within us is using them to talk to us, giving us clues for our healing.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse: Tips to Change Child Abuse Effects

“In the weeds of childhood sexual abuse, we are the sturdy flowers that kept reaching for a slip of sunshine and a trickle of water so we could grow into wildly beautiful, singular people. Together, we are creating a colorful bouquet that is changing the world.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse: Tips to Change Child Abuse Effects

“Dissociated trauma memories are not attached to other memories by association. These memories go directly to the unconscious as a biological response separates awareness from consciousness. It’s a natural, protective occurrence and it happens without will.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“Our experience taught us we were alone so we have to break through barriers of shame, fear, and habit to realize the time has come to find help.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“You invite a time in the near future when you are no longer building your life on the unknown influences of your childhood sexual abuse.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“About half of us dissociated our abuse at the moment it happened. We lived our days not knowing it happened… or could happen again. But every survivor has shadows of their experience following them.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“we learned to turn inward to a place where we were able to re-define what was happening to us. In this mental space, we were able to color our experience with childhood reasoning or bury it deeply”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“: Our life may seem consistently out of control or overwhelming because, in avoiding the truths of our childhood, we didn’t develop the skills to effectively pilot our lives.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“Each survivor chooses how secrecy is going to fit into their healing. Some share with their immediate family, but not their childhood family and friends.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“With the help of your therapist or healing ally, you can identify who makes you feel uneasy, concerned, scared, or defensive.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“They will give you an example of how things can be for you as you walk out of the dark shadows of your abuse.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“I think most survivors transfer the shame of their experience into their present-day healing and become ashamed of themselves for needing the time and support”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“: Their acts violated our trust. : The secrecy told us we were alone. : The shame swirling through our experience convinced us we didn’t deserve the best for ourselves. : Our circumstances twisted our beliefs about what to expect out of life. : Surviving our unpredictable, disempowering childhood left little opportunity to explore our talents or creativity. It’s been said, living through childhood sexual abuse is like living in a war zone. Each of us survived by doing the best we could. Now we have the opportunity to celebrate the child we were and all we did to reach this place in life when healing is possible. Now we get to update our information. And this will bring encouraging, empowering, joy-filled changes into our lives. Each time you go back into a memory, you have the opportunity to ‘see’ what you learned in that moment of trauma. When I was six-years old, playing with my doll with abandon that blocked out all other noise, I found”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“Inviting your memory enables you to turn around and face the unknown fears that have started turning your days upside-down.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“These memories are lost to our conscious and cannot be remembered like an ordinary memory. Sometimes they come to us as flashbacks.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“Forgiveness serves us best when we understand we are no longer connected to our abusers by their web of secrets and power to control our choices.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“I believe forgiving supports us most profoundly when it comes toward the end of our journey, when we intimately know what we are forgiving ~”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“I was survivor of childhood sexual abuse in therapy for dissociated trauma memories.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse

“In healing, we can call upon ourselves to now look into these shadows. In them, we can re-discover our truth knowing we are now able to take care of ourselves.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse