226 Quotes About Survivors

By not standing up for themselves when it is appropriate, many [survivors] damage their self-esteem. They become angry and ashamed of themselves for putting up with inappropriate behavior. The more they put up with, the worse they feel. Soon, they begin to believe they don’t have a right to complain and convince themselves they are making a big thing out of nothing.

It is not okay to ‘live and let live,’ to let ‘bygones be bygones,’ to ‘forgive and forget,’ to let the ‘past be the past’ or any of the other clichés your family and friends will try to persuade you to forget about what happened and to move on. Try not to accept these messages.

You’ve already done the hardest part; you survived the trauma. You are much stronger than you think you are.

The feeling of being rejected, disapproved of, or conditionally loved by one’s primary caregivers is a monumental, long-lasting burden for a child to carry. It produces chronic shame, guilt, and anxiety. The child is blamed for doing something wrong and in doing so learns to perceive themselves as being bad.

People stagger, but they pick up a tattered thread and wind it back onto a spool.

There are a large number of COVID-19 survivors that have been left disabled and are in the process of finding out how fraudulent the government disability system is.

Many survivors struggle to believe the abuse happened. They don’t want to believe it. It’s too painful to think about. They don’t want to accuse family members or face the terrible loss involved in realizing “a loved one” hurt them; they don’t want to rock the boat.

There is nothing like the moving solidarity of survivors to bring out seemingly boundless impulse to deflect, deny, and defend.

To heal from child sexual abuse you must believe that you were a victim, that the abuse really did take place. This is often difficult for survivors. When you’ve spent your life denying the reality of your abuse, when you don’t want it to be true, or when your family repeatedly calls you crazy or a liar, it can be hard to remain firm in the knowledge that you were abused.