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Trauma Quotes

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Trauma Quotes

“I love you—fiercely, helplessly—but that love terrifies me. Because love is fragile, and you, like all things I cherish, are fleeting. One day, you’ll leave—by choice or by fate—and I’ll be left holding the shape of you in my hands, trying to fill the void you’ve carved into me. I love you—I do—but sometimes love feels like a cruel gift, something too big for my trembling hands to hold. I know you’ll go, whether it’s with a whisper or a storm. And when you leave, you’ll take the best parts of me with you, leaving echoes where laughter used to live and silence where your name once was. How do I love something I know I’ll lose? How do I prepare for a goodbye I never want to say?”

“Oh I brought you something,” Trey said. I eyed him with suspicion. He pulled out a slightly crushed handful of dandelion flowers from his jacket pocket. My breath caught. He laid them on the exam table, and I knew he’d continued talking, but I wasn’t listening. I stared at the small, cheerful yellow flowers, overwhelmed with the flood of emotion sweeping over me. “Bones?” I glanced up at Trey, startled when I realized he'd moved closer. He looked at me with concern. “You ok?” I nodded, gazing back at the flowers. My heart ached, and I didn’t think before I whispered, “My brother used to bring me these.”

“So, everything that’s happened, that’s just the way life is, and it’s never going to be the way you think you want it. I’m not embarrassed about my brother, but I just don’t want to relive it, because people ask, “Oh, where’s your brother, what’s he doing?” and I have to say I don’t know, I haven’t seen him in over 30 years.”

“No, her father was ashes in the wind, his existence marked only by a headstone on a hill outside the city. Or so her sisters had told her. I loved you from the first moment I held you in my arms, her father had said to her in those last moments together. Don't lay your filthy hands on my daughter. Those had been his final words, spat at the King of Hybern. Her father had squandered those final words on that worm of a king. Her father. The man who had never fought for his children, not until the end. When he had come to save them- to save the humans and the Fae, yes, but most of all, his daughters. Her. A grand, stupid waste. Unholy dark power flowed through her, and it had not been enough to stop the King of Hybern from snapping his neck. She had hated her father, hated him deeply, and yet he had loved her, for some inexplicable reason. Not enough to try to spare them from poverty or keep them from starving. But somehow it had been enough for him to raise an army on the continent. To sail a ship named for her into battle. She had still hated her father in those last moments. And then his neck had cracked, his eyes not full of fear as he died, but of that foolish love for her. That was what had lingered- the look in his eyes. The resentment in her heart as he died for her. It had festered, gnawing at her like the power she buried deep, running rampant through her head until no icy baths could numb it away. She could have saved him. It was the King of Hybern's fault. She knew that. But it was hers, too. Just as it was her fault that Elain had been captured by the Cauldron after Nesta spied on it with that scrying, her fault that Hybern had done such terrible things to hunt her and her sisters down like a deer. Some days, the sheer dread and panic locked Nesta's body up so thoroughly that nothing could get her to breathe. Nothing could stop the awful power from beginning to rise, rise, rise in her. Nothing beyond the music at those taverns, the card games with strangers, the endless bottles of wine, and the sex that made her feel nothing- but offered a moment of release amid the roaring inside her.”

“Nesta only simmered, near-shaking with rage. Or cold. Cauldron, it was cold in here. Only the heated floors offered any reprieve. 'Fire,' he said, and the House obeyed. A great blaze flared to life in the hearth behind him. 'No fire,' she said, focused upon Cassian, though her words were not to him. The House seemed to ignore her. 'No fire,' she ordered. He could have sworn she blanched slightly. For a heartbeat, he was again in Rhys's mother's house in Windhaven. She'd been staring and staring into the fire, as if speaking to it, as if unaware that even he was there. The fire crackled and popped. Nesta seethed to the open air. 'I said-' A log cracked, as if the House was merrily ignoring her, adding heat to the flame. But Nesta flinched. Barely a blink and half a shudder, but her entire body went rigid. Fear and dread flashed over her features, then vanished. Strange.”

“She didn't want to be in her head, didn't want to be in her body. Wanted the beating of drums and the riotous song of a fiddle to fill her with sound, to silence any thoughts. Wanted to find a bottle of wine and drink deep, let the wine pull her out of herself, set her mind drifting and numb.”

“He saw into me, but still smiled and felt warm without the pity or anger or desire to pull away that’s common when people find out how really busted up you are. For as much as people say they care, you really find out how much of it’s a lie when you show someone the wounds you carry. They think they understand because they were disappointed once, but I’ve learned that those who brag about charity are usually the least charitable.”

“My father's death, it's- it's the reason I can't stand fires.' His hand stilled, then resumed. 'Why?' 'The logs...' She shuddered. 'They crack. It sounds like breaking bone.' 'Like your father's neck.' 'Yes,' she breathed. 'That's what I hear. I don't know how I'll ever not hear his neck snapping when I'm near a fire. It's... it's torture.' He continued to stroke her head. A wave of words pushed themselves out of her. 'I should have found a way to save us before then. Save Elain and Feyre when we were poor. But I was so angry, and I wanted him to try, to fight for us, but he didn't, and I would have let us all starve to prove what a wretch he was. It consumed me so much that... that I let Feyre go into that forest and told myself I didn't care, that she was half-wild, and it didn't matter, and yet...' She let out a wrenching cry. 'I close my eyes and I see her that day she went out to hunt the first time. I see Elain going into the Cauldron. I see her takin by it during the war. I see my father dead. And now I will see Feyre's face when I told her that the baby would kill her.' She shook and shook, her tears burning hot down her cheeks. Cassian kept stroking her hair, her back, as he held her by the lake. 'I hate it,' she said. 'Every part of me that... does these things. And yet I can't stop it. I can't let down this barrier, because to let it fall, to let everything in...' This was what would happen. This shrieking mess she'd become. 'I can't bear to be in my head. I can't bear to hear and see everything, over and over. That is all I hear- the snapping of his neck. His last words to me. That he loved me.' She whispered, 'I didn't deserve that love. I deserve nothing.' Cassian's hands tightened on her, her own hands falling away as she buried her face against his jacket and wept into his chest.”

“Rumination in grief is a form of avoidance. We know - this is completely counterintuitive. As we talked about [previously], avoidance is when you work hard not to think about something. How could rumination possibly be a form of avoidance? Margaret Stroebe, Henk Schut, Maarten Eisma, and an array of their colleagues first suggested this 'rumination as avoidance' hypothesis and then did research to investigate it. There is a lot to say on this topic, but here's what you need to know: studies have found that grieving people will often ruminate on very specific aspects of their loss. This keeps their brains so busy with those very focused events or details that they don't have to face the even more difficult and painful aspects of their grief.”

“His face paled, and he stroked a hand down the mare's cobweb-coloured mane. 'I was forced to watch as my father butchered the female I loved. My brothers forced me to watch.' My heart tightened for him- for the pain that haunted him. 'There was no magic spell, no miracle to bring her back. There were no gathered High Lords to resurrect her. I watched, and she died, and I will never forget that moment when I heard her heart stop beating.' My eyes burned. 'Tamlin got what I didn't,' Lucien said softly, his breathing ragged. 'We all heard your neck break. But you got to come back. And I doubt that he will ever forget that sound, either. And he will do everything in his power to protect you from that danger again, even if it means keeping secrets, even if it means sticking to rules you don't like. In this, he will not bend. So don't ask him to- not yet.' I had no words in my head, my heart. Giving Tamlin time, letting him adjust... It was the least I could do.”

“Recovery unfolds in three stages. The central task of the first stage is the establishment of safety. The central task of the second stage is remembrance and mourning. The central focus of the third stage is reconnection with ordinary life.”

“For Someone Awakening To The Trauma of His or Her Past: For everything under the sun there is a time. This is the season of your awkward harvesting, When the pain takes you where you would rather not go, Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place You had forgotten you knew from the inside out; And a time when that bitter tree was planted That has grown always invisibly beside you And whose branches your awakened hands Now long to disentangle from your heart. You are coming to see how your looking often darkened When you should have felt safe enough to fall toward love, How deep down your eyes were always owned by something That faced them through a dark fester of thorns Converting whoever came into a further figure of the wrong; You could only see what touched you as already torn. Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning. And your memory is ready to show you everything, Having waited all these years for you to return and know. Only you know where the casket of pain is interred. You will have to scrape through all the layers of covering And according to your readiness, everything will open. May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate guide Who can accompany you through the fear and grief Until your heart has wept its way to your true self. As your tears fall over that wounded place, May they wash away your hurt and free your heart. May your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound So that for the first time you can walk away from that place, Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed, And feel the clear, free air bless your new face.”