My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted...

Those who were molested or beaten as children or teenagers might later be vulnerable to sexual abuse or violence, because their natural impulses to protect themselves and protest (physical and verbal) were extinguished. Expectation of...

I don’t want you to have to handle it. That’s the horror of my past. But you…you’re the reality of my present. You’re the proof I survived. The prize in the cereal box.

The guarantee of safety in a battering relationship can never be based upon a promise from the perpetrator, no matter how heartfelt. Rather, it must be based upon the self-protective capability of the victim. Until...

I spent most of my life believing lwas crazy because all the crazy things I experienced in childhood were treated as nonexistent or normal. This belief colored every decision made, from something so basic as...

The survivor movements were also challenging the notion of a dysfunctional family as the cause and culture of abuse, rather than being one of the many places where abuse nested. This notion, which in the...

It wasn’t a sign of weakness to tell what happened to me. I feel guilt no longer, only regret. The other emotions are coming around too. How much further do I need to go? I’m...

So often parents of abused children feel helpless. When a child falls, and scrapes her knees parents can erase the hurt by kissing it and putting a Band-Aid on it, but not so with the...

I loved and lost and survived.

Why did I allow the abuse to continue? Even as a teenager?I didn’t. Something that had been plaguing me for years now made sense. It was like the answer to a terrible secret. The thing...

My secret wish is right now to be romancing this dead girl. A dead girl. Any dead girl. I’m not what you’d call choosy.

A broken person understands she needs rescue, and she depends on God to resurrect and deliver. And she also understands that even if God chooses not to deliver, His ways are higher and more amazing...

I’ve worked hard to remember it…The problem is I’m not sure what’s real memory and what’s my brain filling in details, like a guy whose heart stops and he thinks he sees a bright light....

You’re a survivor because everyday you make a choice not to be governed by their harsh words or actions. No one has the right to take away your happiness.

You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it,” she said.”And it’s the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than...

I vowed that I would never tell anyone of my shame. They say that when you kept a secret, it eats you up inside, but I felt it was better that way. I wanted to...

All this occupied his thoughts when he revisited the places of his war. Tramping over soil fed by the blood of men he had led and whose faces now stirred in his memory, it was...

The discovery that detonated Cleveland is one of Britain’s great contributions to awareness of child abuse. In 1986 and 1987 the Leeds paediatricians Dr Jane Wynne and Dr Christopher Hobbs reported in the Lancet that...

As I let it out, layer by layer, Dr. Driscoll helped with the bumps and valleys. He knew just how much to draw out of me and how much I could handle. He is such...

Maybe that is the greatest of wonders: that we can be shaped so much by those we’ve known closely, and equally by those we’ve never known at all – and that we too can change...

A true survivor is someone who, after 12+ years of being schooled, remains independent in their thinking.

I remembered during puberty, through the anorexic mists of intermittent menstrual cycles, that man, my father, lifting Shirley’s nightdress over her head and asking her in his mocking way to choose what colour condom she...

First you try to find a reason, try to understand what you’ve done so wrong so you can be sure not to do it anymore. After that you look for signs of a Jekyll and...

Beliefs are physical. A thought held long enough and repeated enough becomes a belief. The belief then becomes biology.

I thought I would die without you, in reality I was reborn…

You’re a survivor because every day you make a choice not to be governed by their harsh words or actions. No one has the right to take away your happiness

It is important for people to know that no matter what lies in their past, they can overcome the dark side and press on the a brighter world.

People who have so much of their personality invested in the Internet can’t really survive as whole individuals without it.

I am passionate about the things that I believe in like equality, free will, justice and love.

In her heart she is a mourner for those who have not survived. In her soul she is a warrior for those who are now as she was then. In her life she is both...

abuse seminar” together some place, somehow? Was it taught in the seminary? In some dark corner? It goes beyond coincidence—the similarities in deeds and verbiage that these predators use on us. It truly chilled me...

Even in times of trauma, we try to maintain a sense of normality until we no longer can. That, my friends, is called surviving. Not healing. We never become whole again … we are survivors....

Every sea to scare the sailor, I have sailed.

It’s hard to feel supported when you can’t tell people everything. People haven’t really got a clue what it’s like. It’s hard to trust anyone. It’s hard to believe people won’t let you down. I’m...

There were other strange signals and signs. Another day, suddenly felt an almost overwhelming urge to travel to Balitmore. I wanted to ‘kidnap’ a helicoper fly it there if I didn’t drive the there’, she...

All emotions, even those that are suppressed and unexpressed, have physical effects. Unexpressed emotions tend to stay in the body like small ticking time bombs—they are illnesses in incubation.

Live for what you love, and die for what you’re unwilling to live without…

Do not be ashamed of your past. Learn from those experiences and move forward in your life. Teach others of the possibilities of change & living victoriously. You are a survivor.

A victim has the potential to transform into a survivor, but if that is forgotten, a true victim is what they become. A survivor must endure strife and persevere against those thoughts that would convince...

He loves me so he hurts meTo try and make me good.It doesn’t work. I’m just too badAnd don’t do what I should.My memory has so many different sections and, like all survivors, there are...

My hand-stitched wings itchto take flightto test the winds of changethat inevitably blow at the end of a cycle.

When faced with pain and evil, we have to make a choice.We can choose to be taken by the evil.Or we can try to embrace the good.

You are stronger than you know.

Someone once told me that survivors have to look out for one another.

Just as sometimes I wondered if Grandpa had ever existed, sometimes I wondered if I truly existed myself. As I was running, I could see myself from outside myself: a skinny girl with the flapping...

I think you’ve got to get out whatever’s hurting you through your art, so it doesn’t twist you up inside.

it’s very unlikely there could be survivors.

We search for happiness across every landscape, if only we knew that the seed in which it first grows, is planted within ourselves…

The enemy plotted against you and awaited your downfall. Look at you surviving. And your enemies can not figure out how. What you have inside is greater than any negative force.

Over the years, I learned to smile or laugh when I was supposed to. I kept my true self hidden; I did not need to unleash my pain on the world around me. Instead, I...