top of page
Quote_1.png
Aspen Matis

"The entire time, he'd only ever looked at my body, never at my face, his empty eyes hungry, never seeing me at all. I wasn't the presence of a person, but a body. I could have said anything, he wouldn't have heard me. He'd never responded, not by stopping, not with his words."

Standard 
 Customized
"The entire time, he'd only ever looked at my body, never at my face, his empty eyes hungry, never seeing me at all. I wasn't the presence of a person, but a body. I could have said anything, he wouldn't have heard me. He'd never responded, not by stopping, not with his words."

Exlpore more Trauma quotes

Quote_1.png
Asa Don Brown

"Because the past was always around her and might return at any time. It prowled the world searching for her, and she knew it was growing angrier at every passing day."

Quote_1.png
Asa Don Brown

"Shock is a merciful condition. It allows you to get through disaster with a necessary distance between you and your feelings."

Quote_1.png
Asa Don Brown

"Have you ever experienced a shattering in your own personal life? Where death, divorce, financial loss, failure, or disaster changed your world to such an extent that you weren't sure how to rebuild again? Clearing the debris from the aftermath is a great first step. It enables you to start with a clean slate so you can rebuild exactly what you desire. Where can you begin?"

Quote_1.png
Asa Don Brown

"But my father, a thief in many ways, had robbed me of my concentration."

Quote_1.png
Asa Don Brown

"Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn't get away from the hurt of them. She could leave Eric, walk out of her apartment, walk forever if she liked, but she couldn't escape what really hurt. Tonight even the sky felt like a prison."

Quote_1.png
Asa Don Brown

"The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture."

Quote_1.png
Asa Don Brown

"This was true, she knew. Being involved with him gave her the privileged position of knowing him intimately. There were nights when he would wake up sweating, the nightmares returning out of the blue after a peaceful period sometimes weeks long. Growing up in the middle of a fierce civil war could indelibly mark a child. To Mykl, birthdays were always just another year under the belt, where the only reason to celebrate was that you weren't dead yet. She took his hand, squeezed it tight and led him inside."

Quote_1.png
Asa Don Brown

"It was like waking from a nightmare to a worse nightmare."

Quote_1.png
Asa Don Brown

"Between 60 and 80 percent of strippers come from a background of sexual abuse."

Quote_1.png
Asa Don Brown

"The moment her hymen was plucked from her body in the wilderness, Her soul was taken from sanity."

Explore more quotes by Aspen Matis

Quote_1.png
Aspen Matis
"I wanted both things: strength in my independence and also this new desire. This felt like the beginning of a new kind of love."
Quote_1.png
Aspen Matis
"Because I feared I couldn't walk to Newton Centre without her, I needed to hike through desert, snow and woods alone.Childhood is a wilderness."
Quote_1.png
Aspen Matis
"Childhood is a wilderness."
Quote_1.png
Aspen Matis
"I wanted him to declare in shock how overlooked and underestimated I had been ever since I was a child. How lucky he felt to be the one to have discovered me, to have me. I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic."
Quote_1.png
Aspen Matis
"But the truth was stranger than an aimless road, it always was."
Quote_1.png
Aspen Matis
"Absolutely devout in her complete care of my body, she had only taught me to be weak and voiceless. But I had unlearned that lesson. Our enmeshment no longer felt to me like proof of love. I was no longer willing to permit this silencing. Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing-able-to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed her to help me, to take care of things for me-and to save me-but, back in the home where I'd learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it."
Quote_1.png
Aspen Matis
"I wrote through darkness, vividly seeing: my passivity was not a crime; my desire to trust was not a flaw."
Quote_1.png
Aspen Matis
"I saw for the first time that I could stop giving people the power to make me feel disrespected. In my anger I began to see the absurdity of allowing this boy to shame me."
Quote_1.png
Aspen Matis
"I was going to mean what I said, to be direct and firm.I found my moleskin notebook and on the page behind the pages addressed to Never-Never and my family-two unsent letters-I wrote: I am the director of my life."
Quote_1.png
Aspen Matis
"She told me that my rape was not my fault, that I should feel no shame, that " simple as it may sound " I hadn't caused it. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. It was true. And it had not been obvious to me. And hearing it from someone else, a professional, someone who should know, helped me believe that soon I would believe it."
bottom of page