Best 925 quotes in «recovery quotes» category

She pored over the books. Paused to name every sketched and pressed flower aloud, and speak its meaning; an incantation to end the burden of carrying an untold story inside her.

She’s all the blood I’ve ever shed. She’s every time I’ve ever thought of death. She’s every time I’ve ever looked at happiness and thought, ‘That’s not meant for me.

She was doing just what it looked like she was doing, lying about, half-awake and half-asleep, passing the time and waiting for something to change. Because it seemed very clear to her, in those first few days, that what she felt was so intolerable that it couldn't possibly last, and if she did nothing to distract herself from it, she'd use it up, and then she'd be able to get up, and move about, and care once again about her duties to her people, about her constitutional obligations to dancing and singing and feasting and praising the movements of the stars. She didn't consider at all--she didn't dare to consider--that the sources of grief inside her might be inexhaustible.

Slowly, inch by inch, I felt myself recovering. After a few weeks, the darkness began to recede; my appetite for life returned. Haven was wonderful; she understood and nursed me through these weeks until I felt strong enough to go out in public, to get on my bike again.

So at family gatherings… I try to stick to the acceptable script. Indeed, I discover that the less I say, the happier everyone seems to be with me. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off as a paraplegic or afflicted by some tragic form of cancer. The invisibility and periodicity of my disorder, along with how often I border on normalcy, allows them to evade my need for their understanding. And because our most enduring family heirloom is avoidance and denial of pain and suffering, I don’t need much prompting to shut myself down in their presence.

Sober living is not dry living, it's not boring, it's peaceful and meaningful and full of light and truth.

So because you are converting it, you are grabbing back your life.

So ask me if I am alright. 'I’m fine; I’m always fine.' You see this look in my eyes. 'No, I’m fine. I am always fine.' There is a corpse behind my smile. 'Listen, I am fine. Always, always fine as fine can be.' 'Are you okay?' 'I am more than okay. I am more than fine. I am wonderful!

Society must stop the silence and raise their voice to child sexual abuse.

So many cameras are on me. This press conference is going to be on every news channel and posted on the internet. Thousands, maybe millions of people will see me. And they will all be thinking: Victim. Victim. Victim.

So many nights, I stared out at the inky black ocean, believing that if I could only learn how to eat again and keep my hands out of my throat, that would be enough. I prayed hard and desperately to God and the sun and the moon and the ocean and the universe and every shelter dog I’d ever met, as if they were all genies, that I wouldn’t ask for anything more. But perhaps God isn’t a collection of genies, and perhaps it’s okay to hope for more than relief. To hope big. To hope for Sunny’s limitless capacity to love.

Some abusers organise themselves in groups to abuse children and other adults in a more formally ritualised way. Men and women in these groups can be abusers with both sexes involved in all aspects of the abuse. Children are often forced to abuse other children. Pornography and prostitution are sometimes part of the abuse as is the use of drugs, hypnotism and mind control. Some groups use complex rituals to terrify, silence and convince victims of the tremendous power of the abusers. the purpose is to gain and maintain power over the child in order to exploit. Some groups are so highly organised that they also have links internationally through trade in child-pornography, drugs and arms. Some abusers organise themselves around a religion or faith and the teaching and training of the children within this faith, often takes the form of severe and sustained torture and abuse. Whether or not the adults within this type of group believe that what they are doing is, in some way 'right' is immaterial to the child on the receiving end of the 'teachings' and abuse.

So many stories lived behind my eyes. I carried the people I hurt, the lies I told, my sick relationship with food, wherever I went. My mind was rarely grounded in the moment. My past was heavy and constant; my thoughts wouldn’t leave me alone. But when I was with the shelter dogs, I didn’t have anything to hide. Sometimes what existed behind my eyes fell away. I wasn’t bulimic or unlovable or fat or a liar. I was a part of life again. I was an observer, and to more than just the dark cyclical patterns of the mind—here was the strong, sturdy presence of another—the breath moving in and out of Angel’s chest, the beating of her heart, the force of life moving through her and through me.

Some flowers need flames to find their way into this world.

Some of the most effective segments are interviews with various staff members, including Aila, who works for the center’s legal department. She explains the difficulties of rape prosecution, concluding that “only the survivor” can truly define justice. - Kirkus Review

Some stories won't have a happy ending, but there's always hope that the next one will. Hope is everything. Even when there's nothing else. Especially when there's nothing else.

...some patients resist the diagnosis of a post-traumatic disorder. They may feel stigmatized by any psychiatric diagnosis or wish to deny their condition out of a sense of pride. Some people feel that acknowledging psychological harm grants a moral victory to the perpetrator, in a way that acknowledging physical harm does not.

Something contracts in my chest. The air shifts, grows heavy and dense as mud. Alexa twists her hair around her finger and whispers, "Didn't you even try to escape, Charlotte?

Something they seem to omit to mention in Boston AA when you're new and out of your skull with desperation and ready to eliminate your map and they tell you how it'll all get better and better as you abstain and recover: they somehow omit to mention that the way it gets better and you get better is through pain. Not around pain, or in spite of it. They leave this out, talking instead about Gratitude and Release from Compulsion. There's serious pain in being sober, though, you find out, after time. Then now that you're clean and don't even much want Substances and feeling like you want to both cry and stomp somebody into goo with pain, these Boston AAs start in on telling you you're right where you're supposed to be and telling you to remember the pointless pain of active addiction and telling you that at least this sober pain now has a purpose. At least this pain means you're going somewhere, they say, instead of the repetitive gerbil-wheel of addictive pain. They neglect to tell you that after the urge to get high magically vanishes and you've been Substanceless for maybe six or eight months, you'll begin to start to 'Get In Touch' with why it was that you used Substances in the first place. You'll start to feel why it was you got dependent on what was, when you get right down to it, an anesthetic. 'Getting In Touch With Your Feelings' is another quilted-sampler-type cliche that ends up masking something ghastly deep and real, it turns out. [178: A more abstract but truer epigram that White Flaggers with a lot of sober time sometimes change this to goes something like: 'Don't worry about getting in touch with your feelings, they'll get in touch with you.’] It starts to turn out that the vapider the AA cliche, the sharper the canines of the real truth it covers.

Some things you jes' know Doll, and that's one I'd bet the farm on.

Something they seem to omit to mention in Boston AA when you're new and out of your skull with desperation and ready to eliminate your map and they tell you how it'll all get better and better as you abstain and recover: they somehow omit to mention that the way it gets better and you get better is through pain. Not around pain, or in spite of it.

Sometimes I struggle. Sometimes I falter. Sometimes I live in gray. But always I remember the yarrow you’ve grown in the spaces of my rib cage. I now love with roses from my heart, with lilacs from my mouth.

Sometimes the people around you won't understand your journey. They don't need to, it's not for them.

Sometimes the process of growth looks a lot like destruction and pain. But you'll realize with time that you're not breaking; you're healing.

Sometimes we need to be knocked down in a place so dark that we have no choice but to trust our heart to illuminate the way.

Sometimes you have to cross the boundaries of Death in order to discover the meaning of Life.

Sometimes we take leaps of faith, and sometimes we take tiny steps. Even the tiniest step can require a lot of courage. Like climbing out of denial and admitting my real need for help. Like trusting someone who said I wouldn’t die from eating a bowl of pasta, and taking another bite. Like reaching for a pen or a yoga mat when what I really wanted to do was reach for a cookie. Like searching for a smile in my heart when my mind was busy screaming about how sad and serious I should be.

Somewhere in the distance I hear the bucket clatter to the floor. I plunge the knife into his head, again and again. His arms lash out blindly, getting in the way. Blood mixes with water cascading to the floor. Meathead staggers to his feet, pulling off his shirt, trying to peel away the agony, but his skin comes away with it, leaving a raw, red mess. There’s a shrill alarm and the sound of pounding feet. I hurl the knife through the bars at the window. A blur of dark faces converge in my vision, fists and feet, punching and kicking. Meathead’s mates are yanking me off, trying to hurt me. Screws come rushing and soon they’re everywhere as I’m half-carried, half-dragged along the corridor. ‘Blimey,’ a thought comes from somewhere in all the chaos, ‘I’ve only been out a day and already I’m heading straight back down the chokey!’ The last thing I see, as a screaming Meathead is hurried to the hospital, is my cellmate in the middle of the crowd peering worriedly after me. Course he’s worried! The stinky bastard is wondering where his next bit of scag is coming from!

Start treating the damaged “you” just the way you would have wished to be handled when you were a child.

Sounds of depression remembering rejection Hope turns to despair black roses everywhere Keep hearing echoes voices in my mind repeating endless lies evil in disguise

Spiritual and emotional recovery are possible because the human brain is a living organ that we can transform by making new choices and being in non-shaming recovery-based environments.

STAY POSITIVE (your body hears everything you think)

Stop looking back when your future is ahead of you

Stay strong and stand firm in your resistance.

Still, it’s never about staying a prisoner in your childhood, it’s about your childhood occurrences, incidents and episodes staying fastened and chained inside of you.

Stop chasing society’s definition of success and chase your own definition of success. Success is an emotion that is experienced when you are completely fulfilled and content with where you are in life; it has nothing to do with a specific job, a specific amount of money in your bank account, or the quality of material possessions you acquire. You can be the richest man in the world, but still, feel unsuccessful, and you can be the poorest man in the world, but still, feel extremely successful.

Stop validating your victim mentality. Shake off your self-defeating drama and embrace your innate ability to recover and achieve.

Strength is about pulling yourself together, even after you’ve been shattered into a thousand pieces. Falling is merely the first movement we take before rising

Survivors may become overly flooded with a disposition of responsibility, guilt, anger, shame, fear, and grief.

Suddenly, she doesn't want to die. She has no real reason not to, no sudden revelation, except that it's equally pointless to die as not to die. Why doesn't she die? She lives because she's meant to live, because she's already alive and it's comparatively easy to stay that way. She lives because, even though she doesn't know what it is, there must be a reason why she's here in the first place. She lives because either she's not as brave as all the dead girls who've gone before her, or she's actually braver - it's hard to tell.

Survivors of abuse are naturally aware that the past possesses the solutions for shaping up and going forward.

Take a shower. Wash away every trace of yesterday. Of smells. Of weary skin. Get dressed. Make coffee, windows open, the sun shining through. Hold the cup with two hands and notice that you feel the feeling of warmth. 
 You still feel warmth.
Now sit down and get to work. Keep your mind sharp, head on, eyes on the page and if small thoughts of worries fight their ways into your consciousness: threw them off like fires in the night and keep your eyes on the track. Nothing but the task in front of you.  Get off your chair in the middle of the day. Put on your shoes and take a long walk on open streets around people. Notice how they’re all walking, in a hurry, or slowly. Smiling, laughing, or eyes straight forward, hurried to get to wherever they’re going. And notice how you’re just one of them. Not more, not less. Find comfort in the way you’re just one in the crowd. Your worries: no more, no less. Go back home. Take the long way just to not pass the liquor store. Don’t buy the cigarettes. Go straight home. Take off your shoes. Wash your hands. Your face. Notice the silence. Notice your heart. It’s still beating. Still fighting. Now get back to work.
Work with your mind sharp and eyes focused and if any thoughts of worries or hate or sadness creep their ways around, shake them off like a runner in the night for you own your mind, and you need to tame it. Focus. Keep it sharp on track, nothing but the task in front of you. Work until your eyes are tired and head is heavy, and keep working even after that. Then take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes.
Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it, after all. You made it, another day. And you can make it one more. 
You’re doing just fine.
You’re doing fine. I’m doing just fine.

Take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes. Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it, after all. You made it, another day. And you can make it one more. You’re doing just fine.

Take what is good from the past and carve a new path.

Survivors who choose to heal are extraordinary people.

Tend to the things that are killing you in the order in which they are killing you.

Tell the child within you, the one that has remained buried that the “adult” in you is positively safe and sound.

Testifying against my abuser is not about a trial or about revenge This is a woman learning that to wear the burden of hurt but to deprive herself of the blessing that is healing is its own injustice.

That is what Lincoln saw in them, this love in all his friends, who held a close place in his heart, and Oscar, the one dream of his soul. He found it in them, in all of them, with their dirty pasts and their still recovering minds, in their words and in their friendship, and in their souls that spoke to each other in the mist of the clouds or the surging of the trees that knew that, in eternity, they would always find beauty. And that was an incredible world to wake up to.

That night, when the creature sleeps, when he sleeps, the mother escapes into her daughters’ room. She tells her daughter that the creature’s afraid of her having too much love, too much heart. She takes a tube of lipstick and drags it across her finger like a knife, marking it across her daughter’s cheeks, red, blood, war paint.