Quotes About Healing

But emotions teach those who are willing to pay attention. By processing them, we learn to empathize, and love ourselves and others. In fact, understanding this aspect of our being is central to healing our family history, because it holds the most powerful energy that we use to create our lives.

Sometimes the greatest gifts can be found in the darkest, deepest closets of the mind.

As you work to understand your emotions—including those of the family members who came before you—and put together the pieces of your past that have made you who you are, your healing will begin.

by uncovering the illusions and finding the gifts they've masked, we can grow, and begin to feel more love and gratitude for our relatives. This is the true healing process.

We all have the power to choose to forgive, and in doing so, we give back the painful wound to the one who is ultimately responsible—the abuser. We're then free to move on because we've removed a burden.

when you allow yourself to release the burdens caused by other people's abuses and addictions. Because these aren't your fault, it's not necessary to carry them forever. Forgive and take responsibility by choosing to learn and grow from your trials and deciding to move forward in spite of them.

The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes necessary, but so is the other route of getting out of yourself, into the larger world, into the openness in which you need not clutch your story and your troubles so tightly to your chest.

Maybe the word forgive points in the wrong direction, since it's something you mostly give yourself, not anyone else: you put down the ugly weight of old suffering, untie yourself from the awful, and walk away from it.

I was being cured of soldiering on endlessly: my job was now to be still, which had become almost easy at last.

Who drinks your tears, who has your wings, who hears your story?

The art is not one of forgetting but letting go

Davis calls PTSD living at the whim of your worst memories.

A significant portion of the women you know are survivors.

David Morris, in The Evil Hours, his remarkable book on trauma, notes, "Part of trauma's corrosive power lies in its ability to destroy narrative, and . . . stories, written and spoken, have tremendous healing power for both the teller and the listener.

Nobody gets over anything; time doesn't heal any wounds...the landscape in which identity is supposed to be grounded is not solid stuff; it's made out of memory and desire...

With red-rimmed eyes and a wavering voice, he said, "I want you to know that I am sorry. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to understand this." I held the gaze of a man softened by humility, and gently said, "It's all right. You are here now. It's not too late." Change happens gradually, then suddenly. It's never too late to be part of the social movement that will help heal our world.

Addressing our own suffering while learning not to inflict it on others is part of the work we're all here to do.

Nobody gets over anything; time doesn't heal any wounds; if he stopped loving her today, as one of George Jones's most famous songs has it, it's because he's dead.

To tell a story and have it and the teller recognized and respected is still one of the best methods we have of overcoming trauma.

addressing our own suffering while learning not to inflict it on others is part of the work we're all here to do.

The words shot through Vivi's bones and blood and muscle, and her body relaxed, so that when her feet touched the ground they met the earth differently, as though they had found roots that reached deep down and anchored to something tender and undamaged.

She breathed in the vast world of suffering and pure, dark love, and as she did, a well of compassion began to flow in her.

I try to believe ,she said that god doesn't give you more than one piece of the story at ounce. You know, the story of your life. Otherwise your heart would crack wider than you could handle. He only crack it enough so you can still walk, like someone wearing a cast. But you've still got a crack running up your side, big enough for a sapling to grow out of. Only no one sees it. Everyone thinks you're one whole piece, and so they treat you maybe not so gentle as they can't see that crack.

But here—in the midst of this unimaginable loss—is where I found it. The gift in the rupture. Rupture's gift is the chance to feel the pain that we could not afford to feel before. In rupture, this pain becomes ours. Because we have longed. Because we have loved.