Quotes About Healing

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

Forgiveness is the way we return what has been taken from us and restore the love and kindness and trust that has been lost. With each act of forgiveness, whether small or great, we move toward wholeness. Forgiveness is nothing less than how we bring peace to ourselves and our world.

Healing does not mean reversing. Healing does not mean that what happened will never again cause us to hurt. It does not mean we will never miss those who have been lost to us or that which was taken from us. Healing means that our dignity is restored and we are able to move forward in our lives.

We do not need to succumb to the temptation to meet such a violation with retaliation. The only way to heal this hurt is to give voice to what ails us. It is only in this way that we can keep our pain and loss from taking root inside us. It is only in this way that we have a chance for freedom.

Only in restoring the web of connection can we find peace. I'm sure it is possible to heal in a mountaintop cave alone, but for most of us the quickest and deepest healing happens in the embrace of others.

Forgiveness among the members of older generations could open the door to healthy and supportive relationships among younger generations.

When we stay stuck in the unhappy story of what we have done we deny ourselves the gift of transformation. Learning from our past is not the same as being held hostage by the things we have done. At some stage we must let go of the past and begin again.

It is important to tell your story. It is equally important not to get trapped in your story. It is not what happened to us that matters but how what happened hurt us.

we choose to either walk the path of revenge and be bound to suffering, or take the path of forgiveness and be freed into healing.

When we accept our own pain we can begin to see past it to the other person's woundedness. We can begin to consider that if we were in their shoes, if we stood inside their story, we might have done to others what they did to us.

When we can accept both our humanity and the perpetrator's we can write a new story. One in which we are no longer cast as a victim, but a survivor, even perhaps a hero.

The process we embarked on through the TRC was, as all real growth proves to be, astoundingly painful and profoundly beautiful.

Forgiveness is truly the grace by which we enable another person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew.

He made a powerful distinction between healing and curing: Curing involves the resolution of the illness but was not always possible. Healing, he said, was coming to wholeness and could happen whether or not the illness was curable.

he would urge his compatriots to work for and which would form part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission he was going to appoint to deal with our country's past. This man, who had been vilified and

Just as this scale predicted the future health and happiness of the children in this study, so does knowing and telling our own stories of harm predict our future health and happiness in recovering from that trauma. When we know our stories and make sense of what has happened, we get connected to the larger story of our lives and its meaning. We become more resilient, we are able to handle stress, and we heal.

This is also a story about what a good thing it is to forgive— a relief to the one who did the bad thing, and a great relief to the one who gets to forgive!

Damaged children are all of the same tribe: I can look at any adult and recognize one instantly— we're everywhere. Lost childhood lingers like tribal scars— in an off-kilter smile or a look in the eye— there's always some sign.

I hated him for as long as I could. But then I realized that loving him...that was a part of me, and one of the best parts. It didn't matter that he couldn't love me, that had nothing to do with it. But if I couldn't forgive him, then I could not love him, and that part of me was gone. And I found eventually that I wanted it back. ({Lord John, Drums of Autumn}

D'ye ken that the only time I am without pain is in your bed, Sassenach? When I take ye, when I lie in your arms-my wounds are healed, then, my scars forgotten.

Come to bed, a nighean. Nothing hurts when ye love me." He was right; nothing did.

Involuntarily, I reached out, as though I might heal him with a touch and erase the marks with my fingers.

Healing comes from the healed; not from the physician.

But even things that heal leave scars.