Mother, I Don't Forgive You Quotes

“In order to grieve—I needed to “unlearn” the way I learned to ignore my agony.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“In the limousine on the way to my father’s graveside services, I started to cry. My mother slapped me and told me to stop crying. I lacked a model to show me how to feel compassion for my pain.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“I never learned how to process my own pain.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“I feel more at peace with being angry than practicing forgiveness. That never was an honest emotion for me. It was always someone else’s concept of what I should do.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. —Antoine de Saint Exupery”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Grieving and Mourning. As children being abused, and later as adults struggling to survive, most survivors haven’t felt their losses. Grieving is a way to honor your pain, let go, and move into the present.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“To forgive without expressing anger or disappointment is to forgive from a position of weakness. •​Forgiving from weakness only invites more hurt. It never quite catches up with the pain.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Ann said, “My father died when he was seventy-seven, still unable to forgive his mother.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Memories flooded back for me as I mourned increasing losses.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“I was starved for attention, while she insisted I didn’t like to be hugged.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“When I stopped seeing Thomas, he told me that I would be “recovering” for the rest of my life.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself, the means of inspiration and survival. —Sir Winston Churchill”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Grandpa pleaded with Grandma, “Stop it Opal! Stop it. Nancy was a wonderful child.” Grandma ignored his pleas and said as she left the room, “I’m disgusted with you, and I suppose this is the end of our friendship.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“She explains that siblings are often the least supportive of anyone because even though the same parent has also damaged them, they are often in so much denial that they are threatened by your attempts to recover”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“I can’t let her hurt me again. My pain it too great. I can’t forgive her.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Is there anything you want to tell your father?” “I want to tell him that I don’t want him to die.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Can you think of anything that would protect you?” “My father’s eyes.” “Can you see his eyes?” “Yes.” “What do they look like?” “They look like they adore me.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Forgiveness is not a commodity that can be handed out. It is a relationship that must be entered into. — Karl Rahner”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“One of the most dangerous things about forgiveness is that it undercuts your ability to let go of your pent-up emotions.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“To the little girl it wasn’t funny. She felt wistful and a bit sad that it had taken so long to be free of being responsible for the happiness of others, free of guilt, and free not to forgive—and free to choose not to even see her mother.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Well,” he said with a sigh, “psychology for years used to counsel to forgive. But we are beginning to recognize that it isn’t always possible or even healthy to do that. I believe that sometimes it is important not to forgive, and to hang onto a healthy sort of rage at what happened,”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Everyone tells me that I should forgive her. But how can I forgive someone who has never asked to be forgiven; somebody who’s never even acknowledged any wrongdoing, someone who continues to do the same thing?”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“She was also correct that I was guided by my fear and my hope that my good behavior would buy my mother’s love. It hadn’t.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“My forgiveness had not solved my latent hatred or self-hatred.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“But it was not hatred that drove patients to mute desperation in their childhood, by alienating them from their feelings and their needs. It was such morality with which they were constantly pressured.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“For forgiveness does not resolve latent hatred and self-hatred but rather covers them up in a very dangerous way.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“As though my self-esteem wasn’t low enough from years of abuse, try as I might, I couldn’t even get forgiving right!”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Stop digging.... Yesterday is dead and gone.... Try and forget.... Forgive and Forget.... Don’t get worked up.... Anger corrodes.... Everybody lives with injustice at some time.... That’s life!... They did the best they could.... Making mistakes is human.... Forgive! Only through forgiveness can you heal.... Forgive ... Forget ... Forgive ... Forget ... Forgive ... Forgive....”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“After my last call I hung up the telephone and cried softly. So many knew, but nobody helped.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing