“The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.”

“The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.Atroc...”

“The study of psychological trauma has repeatedly led intorealms of the unthinkable and foundered on fundamental questions of belief.”

“Admitting the need for help may also compound the survivor's sense of defeat. The therapists Inger Agger and Soren Jensen, who work with political refugees, describe the case of K, a torture surviv...”

“Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free.”

“The traumatic moment becomes encoded in an abnormal form of memory, which breaks spontaneously into consciouness, both as flashbacks during waking states and as traumatic nightmares during sleep. S...”

“Stop looking for that person you were in the past. She has changed. Look for the person she has grown into. She is wiser and stronger than than ever before. Don't go back to who you were. Cherish w...”

“Closeness was the promise of suffering and pain”

“In spite of the horror, in spite of the tragedy, in spite of the weeks of sleepless nights, I'm finally alive. I'm not pretending. I feel real. I'm not playing charades anymore. I wouldn't go back ...”

“When you're little you believe whatever your mother tells you, so I assumed it must be true, that I must be inferior to the others in some way.”

“I guess to their wide, innocent eyes it all seemed like normal family life because they had never known any different. In fact, I was the only one who had lived with anyone else, the only one that ...”

“Usually we're on the same page. Other times I'm in a whole other book"~ Arika Wolly”

“I am done looking for love where it doesnt exist. I am done coughing up dust in attempts to drink from dry wells.”

“You can deny him, he thought, watching his father across the table. You can hate him, love him, pity him, never speak to or look at him in the eye again, never deign even to be in his crabbed and b...”

“I smiled and looked at her- there she was with such a genuine grin and twinkle in her eyes. I kissed my mother on her forehead and took a long look in to her hazel eyes. I wondered when I would hav...”