Quotes & Sayings About Having A Bad Childhood

And then he kissed me.
I've been kissed before - plenty of times - some good, some bad, but I don't think I've ever been kissed quite like how Ben kissed me.
I've had other girls tell me that sometimes, when the right man kisses them, it's like the entire world disappears and it's just the two of them - connected by some sort of pseudo-magical connection. Like fairytale perfection from some childhood tale.
There was nothing childlike, nor innocent about the way Ben kissed me. When our lips met, when our tongues tangled, it was like nothing I've ever felt before. It wasn't a kiss - it was a promise, a promise which suggested that if I let him into my bed, there'd be indentations in my four-poster from the ties he'd use to fasten me there... — Chelsey Nichols

Here's a secret: Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. You will lose your way, you will wake up one morning and find yourself lost. This is a hard, simple truth. If it hasn't happened to you yet, consider yourself lucky. When it does, when one day you look around and nothing is recognizable, when you find yourself alone in a dark wood having lost the way, you may find it easier to blame it on someone else
an errant lover, a missing father, a bad childhood
or it may be easier to blame the map you were given
folded too many times, out-of-date, tiny print
but mostly, if you are honest, you will only be able to blame yourself.
One day I'll tell my daughter a story about a dark time, the dark days before she was born, and how her coming was a ray of light. We got lost for a while, the story will begin, but then we found our way. — Nick Flynn

Two things are terrible in childhood: helplessness (being in other people's power) and apprehension - the apprehension that something is being concealed from us because it is too bad to be told. — Elizabeth Bowen

In water so fine, a few minutes of bad memory all but disappear downstream, washed away by ten thousand belly busters, a million cannonballs. Paradise was never heaven-high when I was a boy but waist-deep, an oasis of cutoff blue jeans and raggedy Converse sneakers, sweating bottles of Nehi Grape and Orange Crush, and this stream. I remember the antidote of icy water against my blistered skin, and the taste of mushy tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches, unwrapped from twice-used aluminum foil. I saw my first water moccasin here, and my first real girl, and being a child of the foot washers I have sometimes wondered if this was my Eden, and my serpent. If it was, I didn't hold out any longer than that first poor fool did. — Rick Bragg

She had come out of her first illness alive with new hopes, expecting so much, yet deprived of any subsistence except Dick, bringing up children she could only pretend gently to love, guided orphans. The people she liked, rebels mostly, disturbed her and were bad for her--she sought in them the vitality that had made them independent or creative or rugged, sought in vain--for their secrets were buried deep in childhood struggles they had forgotten. They were more interested in Nicole's exterior harmony and charm, the other face of her illness. She led a lonely life owning Dick who did not want to be owned. — F Scott Fitzgerald

This tug-of-war often obscures what's also happening between us. I am your mother, the first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give to you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of tribe, a run at happiness. You can't imagine how seriously I take that - even as I fail you. Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done. — Kelly Corrigan

When you're a kid, you tend to see the best in your mates. Because at least they're not as bad as your parents. — Camilla Way

God is a good horseman. He waits while we circle the fences of our lives - whatever they are, whether it be a bad childhood, or a destructive habit, family problems, an addiction, a personal tragedy, an inability to forgive someone else or to allow ourselves to ask forgiveness, or believe we deserve it. The Good Horseman waits, and each time we turn and look at Him, He stretches out His hand, slow and quiet, until finally, sooner or later, we reach for it, and we come to the center with Him, and find that peace was waiting there all along. — Lisa Wingate

Sometimes my family thinks I've made my childhood a bit more Dickensian than it was, and it probably wasn't all that bad. But I was uncomfortable as a kid. — Tracy Letts

But childhood was not all good, nor were its lessons. Good came with the bad, as dark did with light and weakness with strength. Nothing was simple or pure; everyone had secrets. What — John Hart

I'd spent my childhood thinking bad things, bad things every day. It had made me sick, but it had made me determined. — Julian Cope

I buy an ice-cream sandwich at the Stop-N-Go on my way home. The taste takes me back to childhood. Back when life was dreaming about things to come and believing that if you really wanted something bad enough, it could and would be yours. I remember praying for a bike for Christmas, and there it was. We prayed for Minnie's gerbil to live and it did. Later, in high school, I asked God for guidance about where to go to college, and that very day, like a kite floating straight from heaven, the acceptance letter came from UNC-Charlotte. — Alice J. Wisler

Look at the two of us, barely out of childhood and already we're too old-fashioned for this changing world. Is it possible to be born old? Because I certainly feel it sometimes. How can we hope to stand against unstoppable progress; how can we possibly win a war against the forces of science?"
Oskan snorted.
"Which question do you want me to answer first? Born old? Yes, right now I feel ninety. And as for the rest, we're not fighting progress or science, they're both ideas that belong to people. Ideas that should help us to understand the beauty of our world and improve the lives of everything that lives in it. But the Empire has kidnapped them, and progress of its sort means sweeping aside everything that isn't new, whether good or bad. And to the Empire science is just a means of creating more efficient ways of killing people. — Stuart Hill

I stumbled out into the street, hoping that I looked like a drunken sailor. Everything was all topsy-turvy because my eyes were filled with tears. I clutched my shoes to my chest as I went. I cried loudly, not even bothering to wipe the tears and snot off my face. I just let it all pour down, allowing everybody walking by to see what this world had done to me. If a kid my age walks down the street in her socks, crying her eyes out, then it makes it a bad neighborhood. I was glad I was making their world a shitty place to live. — Heather O'Neill

It's funny reading about how I behaved in the days before memories formed. So thanks for that input, Mom and Dad - wasn't so bad after all. — Connor Franta

Experts recommend two hours of unstructured play for every hour of structured play. While your child is playing take half that time for your own play - a craft project, a good novel (or a bad one), looking at catalogs, sitting outside, dancing. If the very idea of "playing" as an adult confuses you, think back to your own childhood and the things that you spent time on and enjoyed doing. Try them again. As with everything else about children's behavior, there's nothing like a good role model. If you value play, your child will, too. — Madeline Levine

Over the years our mother has beaten us with belts, shoes, rulers, extension cords, hair brushes, a wooden spoon, a fly swatter, a toilet brush, wire coat hangers, wooden coat hangers and sometimes one of our own toys. When you get whacked by your own paddleball paddle or you have to watch your sister getting spanked with a badminton racquet that she asked Santa Claus (AKA Grandma) to bring, you don't feel much like playing with those things ever again. — Bob Thurber

In one sense, I have always felt glad to have had the war [World War II] in my childhood, because, as a result, nothing that has happened in the world since then has ever seemed quite so bad. On the other hand, I never entirely got over my feeling of being cheated when the promised era of peace in a wonderful "post-war world" failed to materialize. I could not understand how, after all that, people could ever even think of fighting again. And I still can't. — Ashleigh Brilliant

I was quite shy when I was younger, but I'm not one of those people who can complain of a bad childhood or any trauma. There was none in my life. I had a wonderfully happy childhood. — Emilia Fox

My parents are really funny. Laughter was a big part of my childhood. Of course, they tell a lot of bad jokes - but so do I. I tell a lot of bad jokes. — Cecily Strong

Don't even talk to me about being a mother. You were never a mother! Just the psychotic twat I lived with for the first fourteen years. — Brandon Shire

Emilio was certainly within his rights not to reveal the sordid details of his childhood even to his friends. Or perhaps especially to his friends, whose good opinion of him, he might feel, would not survive the revelations. — Mary Doria Russell

I think people are intimidated by grilling .. maybe it's the flame, maybe it's the big grills, maybe they've had some bad childhood experiences .. but I think that grilling is actually the easiest technique in cooking. — Bobby Flay

"Rachel ... you need help."
I laugh and it's the same bitter laugh I remember him giving when we met so many weeks ago. "So do you."
"I love you." Isaiah says it so simply that my heart soars and sinks at the same time.
"I love you," I whisper. "Did you ever think that loving someone could hurt so bad?"
Isaiah shakes his head and stares out the window.
"What's going to happen to us?" I ask. Because I don't know how the two of us can continue forward. Isaiah refuses to let me in. It's sort of cruel. He's brought me close with his stories of his childhood and with his words of love, but he can't relinquish control. I refuse to be with someone who won't treat me as an equal. — Katie McGarry

God giving man life and taking it away is not nearly so bad as God taking away childhood and giving him life. — James Gunn

So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was - and am - innocent. The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis — Ellen Bass

Strangely enough, for many many years I didn't talk about my childhood and then when I did I got a ton of mail - literally within a year I got a couple of thousand letters from people who'd had a worse childhood, a similar childhood, a less-bad childhood, and the question that was most often posed to me in those letters was: how did you get past the trauma of being raised by a violent alcoholic? — Dean Koontz

If it is in any case most difficult to choose a life work - since upon the choice, whether it be right or wrong, will depend the good or bad fortune of the rest of one's life - how much care and foresight must he who would enter upon this art employ before he dares to decide. For musicians and poets are born such. You must try to remember whether even in childhood you felt a strong natural inclination to this art and whether you were deeply moved by the beauty of concords — Fux, Johann Joseph

I always prayed the same way at night: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Please bless my mother, father, sister, everyone in the word, and me. And please make my father quit drinking."
As a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism, this is what I know: Something bad is coming; it always does. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed. I can't talk about our secrets; no one understands. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Questions bounced off my self-constructed wall of values
a barricade I'd made from the fears I'd pushed into my darkness.
How could Ryan, a professional baseball player, really resist all those women? How could I really trust Jerry, my childhood friend? I'd barely awakened to sex and already boys were the seventh wonder of the world. Did anyone really trust another person? I needed proof. That proof hadn't revealed itself ... yet. — Pamela Taeuffer

Tall, pale-skinned, and trained for warfare since childhood, the Celts were fearsome. They spiked up their hair with lime, covered their bodies in dyes or tattoos, ripped off their clothes in battle, and fought totally butt-naked, so mad on war and glory that no one could stop them. The Romans were terrified of the Celts, but they admired them too. Too bad Roman discipline won out in the end. But not tonight... tonight is going to be massive - awesome beyond awesomeness - and my Celts are going to win! — A.E. Conran

Acceptance is approval, a word with a bad name in some psychologies. Yet it is perfectly normal to seek approval in childhood and throughout life. We require approval from those we respect. The kinship it creates lifts us to their level, a process referred to in self-psychology as transmuting internalization. Approval is a necessary component of self-esteem. It becomes a problem only when we give up our true self to find it. Then approval-seeking works against us. — David Richo

If a child connects being hurt with being bad, weak, unable to cope, or constantly surrounded by threat, there is no room left for inner spiritual growth. For without a sense of safety, spirit remains out of reach; one is forever trying simply to feel secure in this world, yet that security cannot be achieved without overcoming the imprints of early childhood. — Deepak Chopra