Quotes & Sayings About Trauma

Trauma silences a person. It shatters your identity, and along with it, much of what you thought you knew. — Sandra Lee Dennis

If epigenetic changes caused by trauma such as the Holocaust, or enslavement, can be passed through generations, as researchers have recently found, perhaps some of us are hard-wired to be afraid because our history has taught us that fear is a kind of armor. — Amy Brill

In some ways therapists have it harder than surgeons, who can often correct the
issue with one operation. There's no quick fix for emotional trauma. — Daria Snadowsky

While we avoid taking credit for success, women leap at the opportunity to take responsibility for failure. Men tend to externalize the reasons for their failure, putting it off on something or someone else. Not so women, who absorb blame as if they were born to be societys doormats. (Some women like to speak of their willingness to take blame as if it were a form of altruism. It isn't. Women take the blame because they find it scary to confront those who are actually culpable of wrongdoing.) — Colette Dowling

This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma. — Lynda Barry

Emergency rooms are closed, many hospital wards are as well leaving people who are sick with heart disease, trauma, pregnancy complications, pneumonia, malaria and all the everyday health emergencies with nowhere to go. — Richard E. Besser

There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape. — Brian Evenson

They were trying to orchestrate a revolution, which almost by definition generated a sense of collective trauma that defied any semblance of coherence and control. If we wish to rediscover the psychological context of the major players in Philadelphia, we need to abandon our hindsight omniscience and capture their mentality as they negotiated the unknown. — Joseph J. Ellis

Instead of showing visibly distinct alternate identities, the typical DID patient presents a polysymptomatic mixture of dissociative and posttraumatic stressdisorder (PTSD) symptoms that are embedded in a matrix of ostensibly non-trauma-related symptoms (e.g., depression, panic attacks, substance abuse,somatoform symptoms, eating-disordered symptoms). The prominence of these latter, highly familiar symptoms often leads clinicians to diagnose only these comorbid conditions. When this happens, the undiagnosed DID patient may undergo a long and frequently unsuccessful treatment for these other conditions.
- Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p5 — James A. Chu

A secure attachment is the ability to bond; to develop a secure and safe base ... — Asa Don Brown

The Constitution is never tested during times of tranquility; it is during times of tension, turmoil, tragedy, trauma, and terrorism that it is sorely tested. — Mike Honda

The assumption that everything past is preserved holds good even in mental life only on condition that the organ of the mind has remained intact and that its tissues have not been damaged by trauma or inflammation. But destructive influences which can be compared to causes of illness like these are never lacking in the history of a city, even if it has had a less chequered past than Rome, and even if, like London, it has hardly ever suffered from the visitations of an enemy. — Sigmund Freud

I have only known two men's souls in my life, one the devil, the other the the bird's wings which picked me up and carried me back to the freedom of being. — Wendy Gibbins

Shame is internalized when one is abandoned. Abandonment is the precise term to describe how one loses one's authentic self and ceases to exist psychologically. — John Bradshaw

With each of the choices that we make, we create consequences and we ourselves experience those consequences. If you harm another soul. If you cause pain or trauma in another soul, you yourself will experience that trauma. — Gary Zukav

Unlock hidden memories. Some trauma is just too much for the conscious mind to handle and you have to go in through a back door to access it. So I reluctantly submitted to a few sessions. It wasn't what I thought it would be. No swinging amulet, no metronome. It was more like those guided imagery exercises they'd sometimes have us do at camp. — Gayle Forman

We have trauma, and we have grief. People die, and we find it baffling. Painful. Inexplicable. Grief is baffling. There are theories on how we react to loss and death, how we cope, how we handle loss. Some believe the range of emotions mourners experience is predictable, that grief can be monitored, as if mourners are following a checklist. But sorrow is less of a checklist, more like water. It's fluid, it has no set shape, never disappears, never ends. It doesn't go away. It just changes. It changes us. — Mira Ptacin

Dissociation is adaptive: it allows relatively normal functioning for the duration of the traumatic event and then leaves a large part of the personality unaffected by the trauma. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Workshop Hermeticism, fiction for which the highest praise involves the words 'competent,' 'finished,' 'problem-free,' fiction over which Writing-Program pre- and proscriptions loom with the enclosing force of horizons: no character without Freudian trauma in accessible past, without near-diagnostic physical description; no image undissolved into regulation Updikean metaphor; no overture without a dramatized scene to 'show' what's 'told'; no denouement prior to an epiphany whose approach can be charted by and Freitag on any Macintosh. — David Foster Wallace

The inability to get something out of your head is a signal that shouts, "Don't forget to deal with this!" As long as you experience fear or pain with a memory or flashback, there is a lie attached that needs to be confronted. In each healing step, there is a truth to be gathered and a lie to discard. — Christina Enevoldsen

The 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed have had devastating effects on the U.S. economy and millions of American lives. But the U.S. economy will emerge from its trauma stronger and widely restructured. — Roger Altman

Revenge is best left to fantasy," Munroe said. "It feels better there. In real life you can eventually learn to deal with the pain and trauma, learn to cope on some level, you know? But you can never undo death, and even if you think they deserve it, killing doesn't take away your pain, just puts you on dangerous ground that can collapse out from beneath you at any time. — Taylor Stevens

As you may already know, post-traumatic stress disorder is extremely complex. Each client has a unique, perhaps virtually unbelievable, set of experiences, and an almost equally set of reactions to those experiences. — Aphrodite Matsakis

Do not assume that divine guidance flows only when you are in need of help. Guidance continues to flow whether or not you have problems.
It transcends problems, heartbreaks, and traumas,
flowing through dreams and illuminations.
Whether guidance comes during times of tranquility or trauma, however,
it is up to you to have the courage to acknowledge it — Caroline Myss

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off. — Peter Straub

We actually do generate some new cells, some new neurons. So in the case of trauma there is the potential for there to be some new neural development which gives the person the chance to create new circuitry. — Jill Bolte Taylor

We distance ourselves for protection,
Wear scarves when it's cold.
What seems most outlandish in our autobiography
Is what really happened. — Steve Abbott

When trauma involves intentional harm, such as in a crime or abuse, trust can totally collapse. — Dena Rosenbloom

It didn't take a trauma to make you wear a mask. It didn't take your parents getting shot ... or cosmic rays or a power ring ... Just the perfect combination of loneliness and despair. — Mark Millar

Contrary to popular wisdom, you cannot hide from evil in the practice of evil. You can no more master the horrors of the world by immersing yourself in them then one can master an earthquake by standing in front of a collapsing building every Tuesday to see where one gets hit, or if, and when, or how badly. Trauma is not tenderized one itty bit by inviting the host in repeatedly. — John Thomas Allen

His body forced itself into a comma as a result of the trauma. The — Cindy Patterson

Among its many uses, dance/movement therapy aims to help people overcome trauma, often by nonverbally bringing the elements of the experience to the fore. — Judith Lynne Hanna

It doesn't take two minutes on an examining table for a girl to know that abortion is painful and destructive and it'll have far-reaching effects on her life. Besides the emotional trauma of going through something so violent, there are the physical aspects, the aftereffects. Unfortunately, by the time she's gone that far, it's too late to change her mind. — Francine Rivers

The psycho-babble lavished on her by her mother in a prior life found her, whispering of trauma and coping, how this was not her fault and blaming herself at all was useless. She would eventually try to believe this, as soon as she was behind her locked bedroom door. — Thomm Quackenbush

Living through difficult life circumstances in not an excuse for passing trauma onto someone else. — Cortney S. Warren

Specific parts of you personality may be angry and are usually easily evoked. because these parts are dissociated, anger remains an emotion that is not integrated for you as a whole person. Even though individuals with dissociative disorder are responsible for their behavior, just like everyone else, regardless of which part may be acting, they may feel little control of these raging parts of themselves.
Some dissociative parts may avoid or even be phobic of anger. They may influence you as a whole person to avoid conflict with others at any cost or to avoid setting healthy boundaries out of fear of someone else's anger; or they may urge you to withdraw from others almost completely. — Suzette Boon

To my mind, every emergency room should have a low-intensity laser for people with stroke or head trauma. This therapy would be especially important for head injuries, because there is no effective drug therapy for traumatic brain injury. Uri Oron has also shown that low-intensity laser light can reduce scar formation in animals that have had heart attacks; perhaps lasers should be used in emergency rooms for cardiac — Norman Doidge

Traumatic events challenge an individual's view of the world as a just, safe and predictable place. Traumas that are caused by human behavior. . . commonly have more psychological impact than those caused by nature. — American Psychological Association

While trauma keeps us dumbfounded, the path out of it is paved with words, carefully assembled, piece by piece, until the whole story can be revealed. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Okay, what in Hades just happened? Stones don't glow blue or any other color and they certainly don't burn circles on you."
The stone wasn't talking.
Alexandra considered herself well grounded, yet here she stood, talking to a stone that glowed, burned circles, and refused to answer.
A thread of sensation pricked at the edges of her mind, then grew stronger. It mirrored an idea then became clear.
Tell no one.
What? Looking from side to side, she backed against the wall. Although it felt like someone whispered in her ear, she stood there alone. The day's trauma must have pushed her over the edge, yet the sensation persisted.
Tell no one.
She froze. Her eyes darted around the room. The muscles in her legs tightened as she prepared to bolt from the room.
Alexandra swallowed and licked her lips. "Who would believe me anyway?" she whispered. — H.H. Laura

I was thinking a lot about the aftermath of bad choices, how people deal with the trauma of having survived trauma, if that makes sense, and so I wrote about this character's last day on the job, how after spending 15 years pretending to be a rabbi, he'd in effect become a rabbi. — Tod Goldberg

Carl constantly told horror stories of cursing and beatings from his father and the twenty-four-hour blackout screaming of his alcoholic, pill-popping mother. He used his trauma like a caution sign for what he could do if I didn't silence my backtalk. — Maggie Young

A child's temperament appears to play another significant role in the child's own perceptions and worldview. — Asa Don Brown

The body stores the trauma of our lives in muscular rigidity, thereby keeping us stuck in the past. When we release the tension in the body and align ourselves with gravity, we take a new stand in life. This allows us to be at ease with ourselves and in harmony in our relationship to others and to our planet. — Joseph Heller

I need to remember, however, that there are enormous gaps between what I know and what I think I know. I learned that I need to be very wary of my storyteller's potential for stirring up drama and trauma. — Jill Bolte Taylor

suffer lasting psychological trauma. Still, I don't think it's a good idea to subject her to an interrogation tonight." "Not an interrogation, — Dean Koontz

My interest, perhaps, came out of the trauma of being a young immigrant in this country and constantly feeling my "resident alien" status. I remember trying to learn English on kindergarten playgrounds. I tried hard to be a convincing American but it was a losing battle. I was labeled weird and that tag never left me - all through high school, I was always the oddball. It was not always an easy path - I just had to tell myself that one day, being on the periphery would become an asset (and I think it finally has, as a creative adult). — Porochista Khakpour

Every trauma provides an opportunity for authentic transformation. Trauma amplifies and evokes the expansion and contraction of psyche, body, and soul. It is how we respond to a traumatic event that determines whether trauma will be a cruel and punishing Medusa turning us into stone, or whether it will be a spiritual teacher taking us along vast and uncharted pathways. In the Greek myth, blood from Medusa's slain body was taken in two vials; one vial had the power to kill, while the other had the power to resurrect. If we let it, trauma has the power to rob our lives of vitality and destroy it. However, we can also use it for powerful self-renewal and transformation. Trauma, resolved, is a blessing from a greater power. — Ann Frederick

Prison left me with some strange little tics.' She has taken all the door off their hinges in all the apartments she has lived in since. It's not that she has anxiety attacks about small spaces, she says, it's just that she starts to sweat and go cold. 'This apartment is perfect for me,' she says, looking around the open space.
'How about elevators?' I ask, recalling the schlepp up the stairs.
'Exactly,' she replies, 'I don't like them much either.'
One day, years later, her husband Charlie was fooling around at home, playing the guitar. Miriam said something provocative and he stood up suddenly, lifting his arm to take off the guitar strap. He was probably just going to say 'That's outrageous', or tickle her or tackle her. But she was gone. She was already down in the courtyard of the building. She does not remember getting down the stairs-it was an automatic flight reaction. — Anna Funder

I draw a distinction between traditional Islam and Islamism. Islamism emerged in its modern form in the 1920s and is driven by a belief that Muslims can be strong and rich again if they follow the Islamic law severely and in its entirety. This is a response to the trauma of modern Islam. — Daniel Pipes

I began to think that there was a place for 'Footloose' to get retold again, that there was actually a more conducive political climate, an emotional climate to explore a town that has experienced a trauma and a shock, and starts overreacting. — Craig Brewer

If you're working, it's the best therapy for posttraumatic stress, Juan says. Studies have shown that the gravity of posttraumatic stress is directly proportional to the length of time one lives with the threat of death, and Juan slowly unwinds the trauma of the sixty-nine days he lived inside a thundering mountain by going to work, fixing machines, then going back home, and then returning to work again. — Hector Tobar

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

Confusing being mortal with being threatened can occur in any realm. The fact that something could go wrong does not mean that we are in danger. It means we are alive. Mortality is the sign of life. In the most intimate and personal of arenas, many of us have love and trusted someone who violated that trust. So when someone else comes along who intrigues us, whose interests we share, who we enjoy being with, with whom there could b some mutual enrichment and understanding, that does not mean that we are being violated again. Experiencing anxiety does not mean that anyone is doing anything to us that is unjust. — Sarah Schulman

Part of what makes a situation traumatic is not talking about it. Talking reduces trauma symptoms. When we don't talk about trauma, we remain emotionally illiterate. Our most powerful feelings go unnamed and unspoken. — Tian Dayton

If we remove the dulling effects of the nineteen centuries that had passed, and make ourselves contemporaries with Christ and his little band of apostles, we might restore the difficulty, the trauma, the great paradox of Christ's appearance which requires us to fit together both a divine and a human nature, the creator of the universe and the babe born in a manger. — John D. Caputo

If he was paralyzed, we'd have to put in ramps and have things altered for wheelchair access; you can get kitchens refitted; bathrooms altered ... I'd get him a really fast wheelchair. It'd be OK. If he couldn't talk, I'd get him a great computer. Anything can be dealt with, everything can be overcome. Just be alive. Just, please God, I beg you, please, please keep him alive for me. — Mindy Hammond

Not yet do you feel it. Wait for the future. — Euripides

Lacan wrote about two levels of speaking, one in which we know what we are saying (even when struggling with something difficult or contradictory) and another in which we have no idea of what we are saying. In this second level of speaking there are repeating words, phrases, and even sounds that function as magnets of unconscious meaning, condensing multiple scenes, times, and ideas. He called such markers in speech 'signifiers. — Annie Rogers

The shock of any trauma, I think changes your life. It's more acute in the beginning and after a little time you settle back to what you were. However it leaves an indelible mark on your psyche. — Alex Lifeson

We've survived and are surviving events that have torn at our sense of safety with such force that we've experienced them as trauma even if we weren't directly involved. — Brene Brown

Because modern society has almost completely eliminated trauma and violence from everyday life, anyone who does suffer those things is deemed to be extraordinarily unfortunate. This gives people access to sympathy and resources but also creates an identity of victimhood that can delay recovery. — Sebastian Junger

Having released the wartime images he was carrying in his unconscious, he became worried that he would now be at their mercy, plagued by them in day as well as by night. But what he found was just the opposite. While he did retrieve the horrible images, he rediscovered a lost innocence as well. The beauty of the jungle, the glistening white sands of the Vietnamese beaches, and the intense greens of the rice paddies at dawn all filtered back to him. Not only did he remember his trauma, he remembered himself before his trauma. — Mark Epstein

Phobias are powerful vehicles for aggressive feelings. They condense anxiety. Intrusive phobias aren't part of general personalities, they just kick in at key moments. They're a defence against intense trauma, fear of intimacy, stuff like that. — Christopher Fowler

Until 1943, when Stalingrad and bombing began to change everything, most German civilians save those who lost loved ones found the conflict a numbing presence rather than a trauma. — Max Hastings

No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don't need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers - but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Worldview is often confused with perception; rather, it is our perception that influences our worldview. — Asa Don Brown

Not one person on earth is immune to crime and trauma. — Shahla Khan

So there are three consecutive frustrations: the frustration of need, the frustration of fantasized satisfaction not working, and the frustration of satisfaction in the real world being at odds with the wished-for, fantasized satisfaction. Three frustrations, three disturbances, and two disillusionments. It is, what has been called in a different context, a cumulative trauma; the cumulative trauma of desire. And this is when it works. — Adam Phillips

We must keep in mind Edward Said's important warning that the first reality for thinking creatively (and for us, theologically) about exile is that it is a form of disaster and trauma that is inseparably connected to human actions related to power, dominance, and brutality:

'To think of exile as beneficial, as a spur to humanism or to creativity, is to belittle its mutliations.' (p. 21) — Daniel L. Smith-Christopher

That morning I realized I would probably spend the rest of my professional life trying to unravel the mysteries of trauma. How do horrific experiences cause people to become hopelessly stuck in the past? What happens in people's minds and brains that keeps them frozen, trapped in a place they desperately wish to escape? Why — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

DID is about survival! As more people begin to appreciate this concept, individuals with DID will start to feel less as though they have to hide in shame. DID develops as a response to extreme trauma that occurs at an early age and usually over an extended period of time. — Deborah Bray Haddock

I shared with Fleur the mysterious self-contempt of the survivor. There were times we hated who we were, and who we had to become, in order not to follow those we loved into the next world. We grew hard. We became impenetrable, sparing of our pity. Sorrows that leveled other people were small to us. We made no move to avoid pain. Sometimes we even welcomed it--we were clumsy with knives, fire, boiling water, steel traps. Pain took our minds off the greater pain that was the mistake that we still existed. — Louise Erdrich

The only part of you that hurts when you're given the truth is the part that lives on lies. — Stefan Molyneux

Black trauma is never given space to heal because we have to make sure the white people who hurt us don't feel too bad about it. Even as victims, we're told to care about the feelings of those who harm us. — Luvvie Ajayi

Feelings are not to be suppressed or fixed - they're to be acknowledged. — Jennifer Lane

I'm back in the basement of the Ascension Catholic Church, Francisco. And Little Suzie is here. She's lying on an alter, and they're hurting her. The bastards. They're hurting her. There is blood all over the place. There are candles burning and people chanting." I could hardly believe what I was seeing and I cried out, "What is this? I don't understand. What the hell is this?"
"Ask your unconscious mind to tell you, Suzie," he responded, ever so gently. "Ask."
I did ask. And the answer swept over me with a force so strong that I felt as if I had been knocked backward.
"Lord! Oh, Lord. This is satanic ritual abuse, Francisco. That's what this is! That's what this is!" I screamed. "Satanic ritual abuse. And they're using Little Suzie as part of their goddamned ritual.
p150 — Suzie Burke

Most of us have unhealthy thoughts and emotions that have either developed as a result of trauma or hardships in their childhood, or the way they were raised. — Steven Seagal

Survivors of trauma may have difficulty initiating relationships ... — Asa Don Brown

In avoiding any situations reminiscent of the past trauma, or any initiative that might involve future planning and risk, traumatized people deprive themselves of those new opportunities for successful coping that might mitigate the effect of the traumatic experience. Thus, constrictive symptoms, though they may represent an attempt to defend against overwhelming emotional states, exact a high price for whatever protection they afford. They narrow and deplete the quality of life and ultimately perpetuate the effects of the traumatic event. — Judith Lewis Herman

I was blessed with another trait I inherited from my mother, her ability to forget the pain in life. I remember the thing that caused the trauma, but I don't hold onto the trauma. I never let the memory of something painful prevent me from trying something new. If you think too much about the ass kicking your mom gave you or the ass kicking that life gave you, you'll stop pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules. It's better to take it, spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move on. You'll have a few bruises and they'll remind you of what happened and that's ok. But after a while, the bruises fade and they fade for a reason. Because now, it's time to get up to some shit again. — Trevor Noah

Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor. Reading it-the best of it-can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma. — Sven Birkerts

Without realizing it, I fought to keep my two worlds separated. Without ever knowing why, I made sure, whenever possible that nothing passed between the compartmentalization I had created between the day child and the night child.
p26 — Marilyn Van Derbur

Maybe it was our shared trauma, or maybe it was a combination of things, but I felt warmth emenate from my heart and spread throughout my chest. — Theresa Braun

For years, i lived my life, waiting for the other shoe to drop ... i thought control was something i could have over my life. My goal was to live life, in such a way, that i would never again have to suffer any form of trauma or abuse that would remind me of my painful past. I was living life on a tightrope of tension. I was only happy when things went smoothly and came apart at the seams when i was thrown a curveball.
NOW, i realize, that the key to happiness is surrendering to the illusion of control. And to trust that, no matter what happens to me, i have the infinite inner-wisdom and strength to find my way through. — Jaeda DeWalt

Her voice was flat, in a way Myrna recognized from years of listening to people trying to rein in their emotions. To squash them down, flatten, them, and with them their words and their voices. Desperately trying to make the horrific sound mundane. — Louise Penny

This is the ultimate narcissistic white-girl game. I would picture how I would handle the attack differently. Or the same. Inevitably, I'd think about my own death, which next to staring at your face in a magnifying mirror is probably the worst thing you can do for yourself. The ambulance-chasing aspect combined with the Monday-morning quarterbacking of it all is the luxury afforded to those of us left untouched by trauma. Sometimes I would use these tragedy-porn shows to unlock deep feelings or cut through the numbness. I would read terrible stories to punish myself for my lucky life. Some real deep Irish Catholic shit. Either way, it was all gross and all bad for my health. — Amy Poehler

We don't heal in isolation, but in community. — S. Kelley Harrell

Yet after withdrawing from three wars in two generations - each begun with idealistic aspirations and widespread public support but ending in national trauma - America struggles to define the relationship between its power (still vast) and its principles. — Henry Kissinger

Our identities are tremendously warped and distorted by yesterday's trauma and tomorrow's expectations. — Bryant McGill

Was once on trauma duty when a young man about twenty years old was rolled in, shot in the buttock. — Atul Gawande

Maybe I have this fascination with the dark side because I live in the light. I don't have any dysfunction, and I've never experienced trauma. — Lisa Unger

I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. — Jeanette Winterson

Fear of anti-Semitism almost is part of our religion. Throughout time Jewish people have experienced traumas that we relive in a lot of the things we celebrate. — Jill Soloway

The vast majority of incest begins years before the earliest conceivable age of consent. p4 — Judith Lewis Herman

Our Ancestors knew that healing comes in cycles and circles.

One generation carries the pain so that the next can live and heal.

One cannot live without the other, each is the other's hope, meaning & strength. — Gemma B. Benton

The person who hurt you
who raped you or killed your family
is also here. If you are still angry at that person, if you haven't been able to forgive, you are chained to him. Everyone could feel the emotional truth of that: When someone offends you and you haven't let go, every time you see him, you grow breathless or your heart skips a beat. If the trauma was really severe, you dream of revenge. Above you, is the Mountain of Peace and Prosperity where we all want to go. But when you try to climb that hill, the person you haven't forgiven weighs you down. It's a personal choice whether or not to let go. No one can tell you how long to mourn a death or rage over a rape. But you can't move forward until you break that chain. — Leymah Gbowee

You know, a lot of actors I think go into acting for therapy from whatever trauma has affected them as children. But for me, I think I sought out the drama. That's why I like doing what I do. — Michael Ealy

Trauma happens in relationships, so it can only be healed in relationships. Art can't provide healing. It can be cathartic and therapeutic but a relationship is a three-part journey. — Alanis Morissette

This morning I was ten years old. Tonight I am older than the stars. — Kathryn Lasky