Childhood Abuse Quotes

“So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was—and am—innocent.” The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis”
― Ellen Bass, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

“You can recognize survivors of abuse by their courage. When silence is so very inviting, they step forward and share their truth so others know they aren't alone.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Healing Insights: Effects of Abuse for Adults Abused as Children

“Survivors of abuse show us the strength of their personal spirit every time they smile.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Healing Insights: Effects of Abuse for Adults Abused as Children

“I refuse to let the standards of evil people chip away at my capacity for integrity.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“Childhood trauma does not come in one single package.”
― Asa Don Brown

“In general, the more dysfunctional the family the more inappropriate their response to disclosure. Never expect a sane response from an insane system.”
― Renee Fredrickson, Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse

“The fear of abandonment forced me to comply as a child, but I’m not forced to comply anymore. The key people in my life did reject me for telling the truth about my abuse, but I’m not alone. Even if the consequence for telling the truth is rejection from everyone I know, that’s not the same death threat that it was when I was a child. I’m a self-sufficient adult and abandonment no longer means the end of my life.”
― Christina Enevoldsen, The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal

“The happy family is a myth for many.”
― Carolyn Spring

“She's terrified that all these sensations and images are coming out of her — but I think she's even more terrified to find out why." Carla's description was typical of survivors of chronic childhood abuse. Almost always, they deny or minimize the abusive memories. They have to: it's too painful to believe that their parents would do such a thing.”
― David L. Calof

“Early relational trauma results from the fact that we are often given more to experience in this life than we can bear to experience consciously. This problem has been around since the beginning of time, but it is especially acute in early childhood where, because of the immaturity of the psyche and/or brain, we are ill-equipped to metabolize our experience. An infant or young child who is abused, violated or seriously neglected by a caretaking adult is overwhelmed by intolerable affects that are impossible for it to metabolize, much less understand or even think about.”
― Donald Kalsched, Trauma and the Soul: A psycho-spiritual approach to human development and its interruption

“You can recognize survivors by their creativity. In soulful, insightful, gentle, and nurturing creations, they often express the inner beauty they brought out of childhood storms.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse: Tips to Change Child Abuse Effects

“The fetus is biochemically connected to the mother, and her external, internal, physical, and mental health affect the overall development of the fetus. Stress and depression during pregnancy have been proven to have long-term and even permanent effects on the offspring. Such effects include a vulnerability to chronic anxiety, elevated fear, propensity to addictions, and poor impulse control.”
― Darius Cikanavicius, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults

“Children are not born for the benefit of their parents, neither are they the property of their family. Children belong to the future.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“So many people behave like they think a cinema orchestra is following them around to give them backing music, that they're the superstar of the universe...and the people who believe this way, they're the people who tend to hurt others the most. They think they're the hero of their own story, but, actually, in the pursuit of being so important, they're often the villain of everyone else's.”
― Holly Bourne, The Yearbook

“Your truth doesn’t have to be proven, validated, or accepted by others. It may have been denied in your abuse, but it never wavered.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Spirit Unbroken: Abby's Story

“But Wututu continued to cry, walking with a heavy heart, feeling pain and anger and fear as only a child can feel it: raw and overwhelming”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I think we should all wince when we hear a small child being labelled as belonging to some particular religion or another. Small children are too young to decide their views on the origins of the cosmos, of life and of morals. The very sound of the phrase "Christian child" or "Muslim child" should grate like fingernails on a blackboard.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“What we love and what we avoid is connected to our childhood. Healing lets us explore what enriches our life today.”
― Jeanne McElvaney

“There are many times we think we aren’t able, don’t deserve, can’t imagine, wouldn’t dare, or couldn’t possibly make the choice for our Self. Keep trying. You grow stronger with each choice.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Spirit Unbroken: Abby's Story

“Most of us learn in childhood to "cope"--which is to say ignore, numb, manage, or reinterpret reality. We do it to survive, but our relational instincts get bent in the process.”
― W. Allen Morris, All In: How to Risk Everything for Everything that Matters

“Sexual abuse is an experience, not a definition to be encased in; you are far greater
than any experience suffered through the insidiousness of indifference in the form of
pedophilia. Reaching out for help is not a weakness, it is strength and courage in action.
Recovery is not easy nor is it a quick process however, all souls are worth the effort
required. Who you have come to believe you are can be very divergent from who your
naturally are.”
― Lorraine Nilon, Breaking Free From the Chains of Silence: A respectful exploration into the ramifications of abuse hidden behind closed doors

“DID is understood as a developmental failure by a traumatized child - younger than age 5-6 to establish a unified sense of self across states and contexts. Repeated severe traumatic experiences, primarily at the hands of caregivers, disrupt unification of self through the creation of extreme states.”
― Frank W. Putnam

“I don’t want my daughter to obsess over a guy just because he isn’t a potential rapist. I don’t want my daughter to fall in love with someone because she feels safer with a person who doesn’t like her back.”
― Snehil Niharika, That’ll Be Our Song

“God lives in the smile of a child, uncultured and uncivilized people live in the hands of a begging child”
― Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“Beanie had bought a dog on Friday, a red setter, beautiful red shiny coat, but stupid, scatty and the worst dog she could have rescued from the pound for a two up two down with a small yard. They took it out all weekend. Jordi and Greg loved it and called it Dillan. When they came home from school that Monday, it had ripped the place to shreds. The curtain she had made herself, the rubbish bin contents, the sofa – in tatters. Everything up turned, crap everywhere. They cleaned up as best they could and hid upstairs with the dog. When she came home late, even though she had a skinful, she knew what the dog had done. They waited in bed, holding the dog. She was too strong. It screamed as she dragged it down the stairs.”
― Mark Shearman, Spoils of the Moon

“As we make the journey inward with our people, we will come to the next challenge to our compassion: those inner community members who have actively bought harm to the young ones inside. This is such tender territory, a place where we need to acknowledge the suffering our people have sustained without demonizing and alienating the ones who bought it, for they are now part of the ones in our care as well. This can be radical inclusiveness at its most healing, widening our joined windows of tolerance to truly accept every part.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“(I picture him now reading this, and long to reach out of the page and grab ahold of his shirt front that we might together reminisce some. Hey, bucko. Probably you don't read, but you must have somebody who reads for you -- your pretty wife or some old neighbor boy you still go fishing with. Where will you be when the news of this paragraph floats back to you? For some reason, I picture you changing your wife's tire. She'll mention that in some book I wrote, somebody from the neighborhood is accused of diddling me at seven. Maybe your head will click back a notch as this registers. Maybe you'll see your face's image spread across the silver hubcap as though it's been flattened by a ballpeen hammer. Probably you thought I forgot what you did, or you figured it was no big deal. I say this now across decades and thousands of miles solely to remind you of the long memory my daddy always said I had.)”
― Mary Karr, The Liars' Club

“As children, our lives are like a game of tic-tac-toe—a game like many that are only possible under rules. Only two letters, never more. We are not allowed to imagine past the threshold of nine boxes. Any goal past achieving three in a row is futile.” —Birds On The Wall”
― FinPoet

“Sometimes the light only makes a room darker."
—Birds On The Wall”
― FinPoet

“Tears from an unsung place spilled onto her face.”
― Nicole T. Smith, We Have Shadows Too