The Journey from Abandonment to Healing Quotes

“The recovery task for this stage is to take hold of yourself one moment at a time, to recognize that you are a separate person, a fully capable adult, responsible for your own self-care. It is no one else’s responsibility to meet your emotional needs; only you can do that. Emotional self-reliance involves accepting the intense feelings of the experience, taking stock of your present reality, and assuring yourself that you will survive.”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life

“Every day there are people who feel as if life itself has left them on a doorstep or thrown them away. Abandonment is about loss of love itself, that crucial loss of connectedness. It often involves breakup, betrayal, aloneness—something people can experience all at once, or one after another over a period of months, or even years later as an aftershock.
Abandonment means different things to different people. It is an extremely personal and individual experience. Sometimes it is lingering grief caused by old losses. Sometimes it is fear. Sometimes it can be an invisible barrier holding us back from forming relationships, from reaching our true potential. It can take the form of self-sabotage. We get caught up in patterns of abandonment.”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life

“What is born will die What has been gathered will be dispersed What has been accumulated will be exhausted What has been built up will collapse And what has been high will be brought low. The only thing we really have is nowness, now.”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Revised and Updated: Surviving Through and Recovering from the Five Stages That Accompany the Loss of Love

“akeru. It means “to pierce, to open, to end, to make a hole in, to start, to expire, to unwrap, to turn over.” When someone leaves, akeru refers to the empty space that is created, the opening in which a new beginning can take place. I was amazed at the power of a single word that could suggest that to begin and to end are the same—part of one never-ending cycle of renewal and healing. I”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Revised and Updated: Surviving Through and Recovering from the Five Stages That Accompany the Loss of Love

“many believe their devastation will be permanent. While this feeling persists, it is difficult to recognize that it is part of a process that leads to renewal.”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life

“The energy involved in shattering is the life force, the inborn need for attachment. When that energy is thwarted, it intensifies what Buddhists call clinging; suffering and grief are the result. Its pain is our psychobiological reaction to being suddenly cut off, held back from the relationship we so desire. This powerful impetus to attach is ever present. It can be the source of pain, but when redirected, it becomes the first step toward healing.”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Revised and Updated: Surviving Through and Recovering from the Five Stages That Accompany the Loss of Love

“Your friends and family may wonder how you could want someone so badly who has treated you poorly. What they don’t understand is that your partner’s leaving automatically aroused symbiotic feelings that had been stored deep in your emotional memory. You are left to cope with feelings that stem from psychobiological processes that operate independently of your conscious thought and beyond your immediate control.”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life

“your feelings of despair and hopelessness are in fact temporary, and they are a normal part of grieving over a relationship. In fact, only by grappling with the feeling that your life is over can you cleanse your deepest wounds from past and present losses and build anew. Those”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Revised and Updated: Surviving Through and Recovering from the Five Stages That Accompany the Loss of Love

“but the effects of abandonment apply to all types of loss and disconnection, whether it’s loss of a job, a dream, or a friend. It may be a loss of one’s home, health, or sense of purpose. Abandonment is a psychobiological process.”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Revised and Updated: Surviving Through and Recovering from the Five Stages That Accompany the Loss of Love

“akeru. It means “to pierce, to open, to end, to make a hole in, to start, to expire, to unwrap, to turn over.” When someone leaves, akeru refers to the empty space that is created, the opening in which a new beginning can take place. I was amazed at the power of a single word that could suggest that to begin and to end are the same—part of one never-ending cycle of renewal and healing.”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Revised and Updated: Surviving Through and Recovering from the Five Stages That Accompany the Loss of Love

“When someone leaves, akeru refers to the empty space that is created, the opening in which a new beginning can take place. I was amazed at the power of a single word that could suggest that to begin and to end are the same—part of one never-ending cycle of renewal and healing.”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Revised and Updated: Surviving Through and Recovering from the Five Stages That Accompany the Loss of Love

“However detached they may be from the root of their distress, they spend their life energy bargaining with fear and fighting insecurity.”
― Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Revised and Updated: Surviving Through and Recovering from the Five Stages That Accompany the Loss of Love