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"Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother."
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Exlpore more Trauma quotes
"His abusemakes her an anvilwithout spark."
"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."
"Saying those words made a sharp, quick panic rise up in her, an aching pain that had her throat closing. "You left me, she repeated. Maybe it was only out of blind terror at the abyss opening up again around her, but she whispered, "I have no one left. No one."
"The silences after his last gasp were sung together by a blackbird. I lay there, my eyes unable to close. His were unable to open. I listed the places where I hurt, and how much. My loins felt ripped. Something inside had torn. There were seven places on my body where he had sunk his fangs into my skin and bitten. He'd dug his nails into my neck, and twisted my head to one side, and clawed my face. I hadn't made a noise. He had made all the noise for both of us. Had it hurt him?"
"But I don't know what to him about the aftermath of killing a person. About how they never leave you."
"When I have flash backs from PTSD I wish my mind came with a delete key."
"Between 60 and 80 percent of strippers come from a background of sexual abuse."
Explore more quotes by Anne Lamott
"Mine was a patchwork God, sewn together from bits of rag and ribbon, Eastern and Western, pagan and Hebrew, everything but the kitchen sink and Jesus."
"I like to think that Henry James said his classic line, "A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost," while looking for his glasses, and that they were on top of his head."
"It's incredibly touching when someone who seems so hopeless finds a few inches of light to stand in and makes everything work as well as possible. All of us lurch and fall, sit in the dirt, are helped to our feet, keep moving, feel like idiots, lose our balance, gain it, help others get back on their feet, and keep going."
"There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk."
"When you don't have enough or you run out, you feel in your core that the leak has begun and there will be no end to the leakage. And this makes you feel like a chump. Whereas having some money gives you the conviction that you're not naked in the howling wind, even though you basically are, existentially."
"And I guess when you take away the resentment and disappointment, it's that simple. It is what we do in families: we help, because we were helped."
"Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them."
"I wish I had thrown out the bathroom scale at age 16. Weighing yourself every morning is like waking up and asking Dick Cheney to validate your sense of inner worth."
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