“For me, real strength is going through an adverse childhood and sticking to your dreams. It’s your family telling you they won’t help you pay for your education and refusing to give up. It’s pursuing that education with the constant stress of a difficult home life. It’s not having an inherent support system and creating one for yourself. It’s experiencing the worst time in your life and hoping tomorrow will be better. It’s looking death straight in the face and saying, “Not today.” It’s calling for help when you know you need it the most. It’s making difficult decisions when you know whichever you choose will result in judgment. It’s rebuilding your life after it feels like it fell apart. It’s hearing some of your very best friends say to you they want nothing to do with you and telling them, “I understand.” Real strength, my friends, is not giving up.” StrengthNot Giving UpReal Strength Book:Self-Preservation Source: Self-Preservation
“They can have who I used to be, who I had been, anyway. They wanted the person that had cried for help all summer to wait for their forgiveness and to sit and think about what he had done wrong. I had done that, been through so much pain, and was so tired of all this. If it was him they wanted, then that’s how this would end.” StrengthLetting GoRevival Book:Self-Preservation Source: Self-Preservation
“As a society, I urge us to move past questions of what we could have done and focus on what can we could do now.” CompassionSocietyMental Health Book:Self-Preservation Source: Self-Preservation
“I left the conference room wondering if it had mattered what I wore that day. I don’t think it would have. I think when people are hurt or mad, and they want someone to blame; they see nothing but a striped jumpsuit as I’d just escaped prison. It seemed to me that these eight people I had once called friends couldn’t see anything more than the crimes they believed I’d committed. And they didn’t care why, or if, I had committed them.” HurtAngerBlameMental Health Author:B. Beth