Quotes About Healing

This is what it means to be human, Bex thought. We are all just canvases for our scars.

She wanted to get at the hate of them all, to pry at it and work at it until she found a little chink, and then pull out a pebble or a stone or a brick and then a part of the wall, and, once started, the whole edifice might roar down and be done away with. —RAY BRADBURY, THE ILLUSTRATED MAN

The thing about death, Lacy knew, was that it robbed you of your vocabulary for comfort.

sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice.

The more you get past pain, the more it goes from coal to diamond.

priest said, 'What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.' I was thirteen, and I didn't know very much about the world, but I knew that if there was that much wisdom in religion, I wanted to be part of it.

I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it." Somehow

Maria kijkt me aan. Ik weet niet wat deze persoon jou heeft aangedaan, en misschien wil ik het ook liever niet weten. Maar iemand vergeven doe je niet voor die ander. Je doet het voor jezelf, zodat je verder kunt met je leven. Het betekent: jij bent niet zo belangrijk voor mij dat je me in je greep kunt houden. Het betekent: jij zult mij niet verstrikken in het verleden. Ik verdien een toekomst.

kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through. *

Josie started being able to sleep through the night again, instead of waking up screaming. Part of going back to normal meant erasing the boundaries of what was abnormal, and within a few months, the way Alex had felt on 9/11 was slowly forgotten, like a tide washing out a message she'd once scrawled on the sand.

My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. "Yes," she said. "But see how much of me is left?

Some feel that because they lived, it's their responsibility to tell the world what happened, so it won't happen again, and so people won't forget. Others believe that the only way to go on with the rest of our lives is to act as if it never happened.

forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me. It's saying, You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future." I

Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future

How do you do it? I ask softly, and I'm no longer asking just about her and Josef but about myself as well. How do you get up every morning and not remember?

He presses himself so close to me that any hurt left on the surface between us spreads thin, becomes a binding instead of a boundary

It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice.

But forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself.

Survivors who look perfectly fine on the outside can still be emotionally empty at the core. And because of that, they can't always connect with their kids or their spouses—or they make the conscious decision not to connect, so that they don't fail the people they love.

She wondered if grief could make time run faster, like a glitch in a clock.

What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.' I was thirteen, and I didn't know very much about the world, but I knew that if there was that much wisdom in religion, I wanted to be part of it.

I usually avoided looking at my wrist, at my scars, but this time, I focused on them and realized my body was more than something I was trapped in. I saw a strong backbone, a big heart

What he did wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.

Things that break—be they bones, hearts, or promises—can be put back together but will never really be whole. And