Past Trauma Quotes

“For Someone Awakening To The Trauma of His or Her Past:

For everything under the sun there is a time.
This is the season of your awkward harvesting,
When the pain takes you where you would rather not go,

Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place
You had forgotten you knew from the inside out;
And a time when that bitter tree was planted

That has grown always invisibly beside you
And whose branches your awakened hands
Now long to disentangle from your heart.

You are coming to see how your looking often darkened
When you should have felt safe enough to fall toward love,
How deep down your eyes were always owned by something

That faced them through a dark fester of thorns
Converting whoever came into a further figure of the wrong;
You could only see what touched you as already torn.

Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning.
And your memory is ready to show you everything,
Having waited all these years for you to return and know.

Only you know where the casket of pain is interred.
You will have to scrape through all the layers of covering
And according to your readiness, everything will open.

May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate guide
Who can accompany you through the fear and grief
Until your heart has wept its way to your true self.

As your tears fall over that wounded place,
May they wash away your hurt and free your heart.
May your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound

So that for the first time you can walk away from that place,
Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed,
And feel the clear, free air bless your new face.”
― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

“You don't always have to move on from your past, but you do need to find a way to move forward.”
― Brittany Burgunder

“I felt like a stray dog he had found in a dark alleyway and decided to help save out of pity.”
― Emily Grace, River Of Sorrows

“Darkness lingered in those blue eyes, like ghosts haunted him despite only the two of them standing in this cabin.”
― Katherine McIntyre, Forged Alliances

“They were so peculiar, these days. They were so absurdly hopeful that their faces had taken on some of the stupidity of domestic beasts.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“Soon their arms were wrapped around her, and at that moment Alice knew she had found a home, a permanent one, for the first time in her life. Not just within the brownstone walls of that house, but in the people who resided there. For the first time, Alice was apart of a family.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“But there would also be a time when these fears would slowly ease—when the need to constantly lock and hide and protect would soften, and she would no longer startle at the gentle passing of fingertips on her back in the morning, or a playful jostle of her shoulder by a laughing girl. These things she hoped for, and knew would come. These things she held closest to her heart, like the first peak of sun over a mountain that whispered: You can have this. You can keep this. You deserve this. ”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“He laughed suddenly, a rough, light sound that filled the small space effortlessly, and Kieran let himself say the words in his head, examining them at every angle, let his tongue curl around the syllables and taste them, around the eight vowels and fourteen consonants, without making a sound:
If I am anything, it is light.
They all tasted oddly familiar.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“At long last, his parents no longer symbolized immoveable fixtures that scared him, but rather a chance of a future, a future where he could come into this house without knocking, because he had been given a key.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“The words would circulate through the wintry air, and not even a little bit of time would pass before he would awaken again, in the morning, with his hands clutched to his chest and his throat stinging of pure joy.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“Silences like these were never uncomfortable for them, never an awkward space squabbling for meaningless words to fill it. It was acceptance, of a sort, an understanding. These were the people who had lived long and fitfully enough to discover that they were not alone, that there were people out there who would love and fight with them.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“Stop looking at today through yesterday's lens. Adjust your focus and capture life in living color.”
― Sanjo Jendayi

“Don't allow your past trauma to cloud your judgment of the future. Change your ways and be guided by wisdom. Time heals the heart.”
― Emmanuel Apetsi

“It was 1993. I was eighteen years old when I walked into my first therapy appointment in a stifling hot upstairs office with one window, no air conditioner, to see a counselor with teased bangs and a frizzy bleached perm. Mama had just signed herself into a psychiatric ward for the fourth extended treatment, each months long at a time. Dad had fallen into a vortex of depression [...] I tell myself this, try to believe this: no past can earmark you when you’ve heard the divine whisper of who you can still become.”
― Ann Voskamp, WayMaker: Finding the Way to the Life You’ve Always Dreamed Of

“Memories are never entirely silent. They murmur in your cells, shadow the mind, knock at the door.”
― Nicole T. Smith, We Have Shadows Too

“It’s the crazy people who say they’re not crazy!” said Ginnie.”
― Nicole T. Smith, We Have Shadows Too

“Love is good, but to be comfortable loving and being loved in return, we must realize we deserve it. We must realize we are worthy. Getting to that place opens another door in the journey of our recovery from past trauma and emotional abuse. Beyond it, more beauty awaits—and more joy.”
― D.K. Sanz, Grateful to Be Alive: My Road to Recovery from Addiction

“My body yearned for warmth, but I couldn't bring myself to do anything. Instead, I sat in silence, in the cold, and refused to move. His words kept coming back to haunt me as I faced the ground and silently wept.”
― Emily Grace, River Of Sorrows

“It's too late. I'll never forgive you for that. Apologize all you want, but you can't erase the past. You should know that better than anyone, father.”
― Emily Grace, River Of Sorrows

“I did open the gates on this. And the only way I know to stop it is to go to Arcane House and figure out why it all started in the first place.”
― Philip Henry, The Dead Room