The Girl Behind the Gates Quotes

“Nora is home in herself at last. She has won. And as Janet listens and watches, and knows that her work here is complete, she rejoices. This is what it’s all about. This is the goal. This is the reward. They hold each other’s eyes. No longer doctor and patient, but just two women, equals.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“the measure of our greatness is in how we stand up after we fall”.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“all men, just of different cultures, wearing different uniforms, having different-coloured skins perhaps, but simply men nevertheless”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Emotional wounds need the same amount of attention as physical wounds, but often we don’t give them that,’ Janet continues. ‘We just carry on and try to forget about them; pretend they aren’t there.’ But sometimes there’s nothing else we can do, she thinks, taking a long breath before she continues. ‘But then we end up with all sorts of problems later. Parts of us don’t work very well; we still have pain we hardly dare let anyone touch. We often feel confused about why we feel and behave as we do but can’t seem to do anything about it. That isn’t our fault. And since we’re not bleeding and we don’t have a bandage or a leg in plaster or whatever, nobody else can understand why we are as we are, either, and they don’t know what to do with us, so we are often just left to get on with it, but that doesn’t help us get better either.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Untethered from the life she had blithely looked forward to, she is adrift, her bearings lost. There is no safe harbour in sight. She listens to the silence and it fills her with foreboding.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Eventually she cut her own feelings off so that she could bear to do what needed to be done and, by default, she became an untrained, unpaid, excellent, if granite-hearted nurse.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“the dust motes of her life – hang in the air, then ignite torrents of emotion long buried but never extinguished.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“we can always go back and have another look and do the same as we do with physical wounds – examine them and gently clean them up and take care of them till they heal. It might hurt as we do it, but it’s the only sure way to get them to heal properly.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“sometimes with hindsight we can see it differently. That goes for the things people have done to us and the things that we, ourselves, have done too. And, since blame doesn’t really help, and neither does guilt, hopefully, over time, we’ll be able to banish both these things. If we can do that, it allows us to take responsibility for who we are and where we are, and that gives us the power to move forward.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“blame”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Nora awakes suddenly, her mouth bitter with the unfamiliar taste that she takes a minute to identify as loneliness. Not aloneness. Not solitude. Utter isolation. A pit of nothingness.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Sometimes flashbacks may still recur for a long time, and they can leave you feeling exhausted and sometimes embarrassed about your behaviour. But hopefully you’ll learn to be patient with yourself and tell the pain that it’s only a memory; that it’s not happening now; that you’ve survived.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Memories always have several parts – an emotional bit, a physical bit and a psychological bit. And when something awful happens, we feel shocked, and the memory of it gets split into those parts and some of them seem to get lost altogether. Then we don’t really know what’s happened because we can’t remember it properly. But actually, all the pieces are there somewhere. And, to get well, we need to find them all and see if we can put them back together again, so we can finally deal with what really happened.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“The good news is that we can always go back and have another look and do the same as we do with physical wounds – examine them and gently clean them up and take care of them till they heal. It might hurt as we do it, but it’s the only sure way to get them to heal properly.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Emotional wounds need the same amount of attention as physical wounds, but often we don’t give them that,”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“All these people with wounds tracing back to their childhoods. Lost potential. Lost relationships. Lost peace of mind. The ripples from long-ago traumas still disturbing the waters of the present.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“honourable human being must see that we cannot”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“You know, it feels like you wrote a little play in your head, then played all the parts and got to the end where you’re abandoned, and that was that. But no one else had the chance to say anything before you acted it all out. I”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“As we grow up, ideally we develop a part of us that we could call our “inner parent”. Its job is to always champion and take care of that vulnerable child part of us, whatever happens. Once we develop that, we’ll always be OK.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“knocking over one of her friends in her dash”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“As we grow up, ideally we develop a part of us that we could call our “inner parent”. Its job is to always champion and take care of that vulnerable child part of us, whatever happens.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“We can’t undo what’s been done, but sometimes with hindsight we can see it differently. That goes for the things people have done to us and the things that we, ourselves, have done too. And, since blame doesn’t really help, and neither does guilt, hopefully, over time, we’ll be able to banish both these things. If we can do that, it allows us to take responsibility for who we are and where we are, and that gives us the power to move forward.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“the measure of our greatness is in how we stand up after we fall”.’ Janet reaches towards Nora and places a finger under her chin and lifts it gently. ‘Nora, you have to stand up – to get out of this on your own. You have to make the decision. No one can make it for you.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“five”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Janet”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“counterpane”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“where”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“proudly”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“to”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Robert?”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates