Activism Trauma Quotes

If we can practice opening to the crises in our personal lives as teaching moments, as evolutionary stepping stones, we will be far better prepared emotionally and spiritually for the trauma that collapse will foist on us and everyone around us. ~ Carolyn Baker

[W]hat possible purpose does this lashing-out serve? Will activists be shamed into recovering their previous enthusiasm? Will Republicans stop their vicious attacks because Obama is lashing out to his left? It was pure self-indulgence; even if he feels aggrieved, he has to judge his words by their usefulness, not by his desire to vent. This isn't about him. ~ Paul Krugman

Some people are happy to give feminists credit for things they fear - like abortion rights, contraception for teenagers, or gay liberation - but less willing to acknowledge that feminist activism brought about things they support, like better treatment for breast cancer or the opportunity for young girls to play soccer as well as lead cheers.

As Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon observe, "Although the word 'feminist' has become a pejorative term for to some American women, most women (and most men as well) support a feminist program: equal education, equal pay, child care, freedom from harassment and violence," and so on. ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Trigger warnings are the most ridiculous, patronizing and infantilizing creations ever to come out of feminism....But feminists adore trigger warnings because it reinforces the idea that women are ruled by their emotions, are incapable of recovering from trauma and are just generally hysterical nitwits unprepared to confront adulthood and reality. ~ Janet Bloomfield

Vonnegut was talking," I say today, "about the psychic effects of trauma." There's a sentence of Alice Miller's looping in my mind, about grandiose people and depressives, Narcissus and Echo: "Neither can accept the truth that this loss or absence of love has already happened in the past, and that no effort whatsoever can change this fact." It's the main thing I've learned from reading all this psychology: the future is always trying to feel like the past. When it does, it feels like selfishness, hurt, loss at the hands of others. The trick is to let it empty. Maybe this is another way to come unstuck in time. ~ Kristin Dombek

Of course, conservatives always claim to be against judicial activism. ~ Michael Kinsley

Where were all heroical parts but in Helteranius? and a man might make a garment for the moon sooner than fit the o'erleaping actions of great Jalcanaius, who now leaveth but his body to bedung that earth that was lately shaken at his terror. I have waded in red blood to the knee; and in this hour, in my old years, the world is become for me a vision only and a mock-show. ~ E.R. Eddison

One of the axioms of organizing is that you organize people where they are, and where people are, in much of their lives, is in their communities. ~ James DeFilippis

Many survivors insist they're not courageous: 'If I were courageous I would have stopped the abuse.' 'If I were courageous, I wouldn't be scared'... Most of us have it mixed up. You don't start with courage and then face fear. You become courageous because you face your fear. ~ Laura Davis

It felt increasingly, as I became more whole, that I had made it all up, and that I was a phoney. I had to come to some place of acceptance. If I made it all up, then I am an unspeakably evil person, leading so many wonderful, intelligent people astray. What a scheming mind I must have. I knowledge will be hard too live with. But harder still is the thought that perhaps, just perhaps it is all true; that I really was horribly, ritualistically abused in a satanic setting, over and over again and as a result my mind fragmented. The implications of that are completely overwhelming. It was me, my body, that they did those things to. No, I would rather believe I am an evil and deceitful person. At least the I can change, and say sorry, and live a better life from now on. ~ Carolyn Bramhall

Almost all these hotspots around the world, most have been destroyed to the point where there is no wildlife and very little of the natural world left. ~ Jim Fowler

Worldview is often confused with perception; rather, it is our perception that influences our worldview. ~ Asa Don Brown

Things like "Everything happens for a reason" and "You'll become a stronger/kinder/more compassionate person because of this" brings out rage in grieving people. Nothing makes a person angrier than when they know they're being insulted but can't figure out how.
It's not just erasing your current pain that makes words of comfort land so badly. There's a hidden subtext in those statements about becoming a better, kinder, and more compassionate because of your loss, that often-used phrase about knowing what's "truly important in life" now that you've learned how quickly life can change.
The unspoken second half of the sentence in this case says you needed this somehow. It says that you weren't aware of what was important in life before this happened. It says that you weren't kind, compassionate, or aware enough in your life before this happened. That you needed this experience in order to develop or grow, that you needed this lesson in order to step into your "true path" in life.
As though loss and hardship were the only ways to grow as a human being. As though pain were the only doorway to a better, deeper life, the only way to be truly compassionate and kind. ~ Megan Devine

Maybe tranquility is the dirt under my nails. I know it's there but I never feel like digging it out. ~ Casey Renee Kiser

I no longer seek those things that help me to heal but for those things that fortify me with the strength required to carry the load fate has set upon my shoulders. Instead of finding a way to forget, find a way to bear the constant remembering. The silence of the wild being one of those elements that reinforce the weathered walls of the soul and mind. ~ L.M. Browning

Afterward the Captain was to tell himself that in this one instant he knew everything. Actually, in a moment when a great but unknown shock is expected, the mind instinctively prepares itself by abandoning momentarily the faculty of surprise. In that vulnerable instant a kaleidoscope of half-guessed possibilities project themselves, and when the disaster has defined itself there is the feeling of having understood beforehand in some supernatural way. ~ Carson McCullers

After researching, reviewing, considering, and contemplating with continued attention; I have concluded that the beast is among us. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

I was the whore
I was bound to bore ~ Sijdah Hussain

When I ask you who you are, you'd better say my fucking name. ~ Alicen Grey

Spiritual assets make us more resilient to the trauma and difficult experiences life inevitably throws at us.

Since spiritual assets bring us closer to our Higher Power, we do not face the difficulties alone, and we may find a greater purpose and meaning within the stress & trauma. When we lean on our spiritual assets to get us through, the traumatic event becomes less destructive. Instead, it becomes transformative; we see the difficulties in a new light. ~ Daniel D. Maurer

and you will realize
that fear is a welcome
friend at this table
it has been waiting
to tell its story
for such a long time
and for those who choose
to listen, I promise
that it will be
the most wonderful of tales
you will have ever heard ~ M.M. Van Der Reijden

In this paper I propose the existence of two distinct presentations of DID, a Stable and an Active one. While people with Stable DID struggle with their traumatic past, with triggers that re-evoke that past and with the problems of daily functioning with severe dissociation, people with Active DID are, in addition, also engaged in a life of current, on-going involvement in abusive relationships, and do not respond to treatment in the same way as other DID patients. The paper observes these two proposed DID presentations in the context of other trauma-based disorders, through the lens of their attachment relationship. It proposes that the type, intensity and frequency of relational trauma shape - and can thus predict - the resulting mental disorder.
- Through the lens of attachment relationship: Stable DID, Active DID and other trauma-based mental disorders ~ Adah Sachs

I do... to this day, think that success is being able to look in the mirror and know that I'm alright on that day. I don't believe I've made it–I believe that I'm making it. I believe that I've found my past so that I can live in the present, it's the most important thing to me. The books and the plays and the touring and the gigs and the speeches and the cash...it all pales into insignificance when compared with knowing that I didn't do anything wrong, and I'm going to be okay now. ~ Lemn Sissay

If the sound of happy children is grating on your ears, I don't think it's the children who need to be adjusted. ~ Stefan Molyneux

It is spring 2007, and the block-long security lines into the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History (NMAH) are missing now while it is closed for renovation. The once controversial and "technically superb" exhibition Science in American Life is due to be phased out. The hot new museum exhibit is at the National Museum of Natural History's (NMNH) Kenneth E. Behring Hall of Mammals. There, entering this multimedia, multisensory immersive installation, we are invited to a "Mammal Family Reunion - Come meet your relatives!" - in a savvy response to antievolution religious activism. ~ Katie King

As far as we could tell, the face of the revolution was a sea of embroidering women, patiently waiting the resignation of their repressive governor. ~ Diana Denham

Trans activism in the US has most frequently been grassroots, centered on poverty and criminalization, and often oppositional to the exclusionary "mainstreaming" threads in gay and lesbian politics and feminist politics. ~ Dean Spade

Both vitamin pills and vegetables are loaded with essential nutrients, but not in the same combinations. Spinach is a good source of both vitamin C and iron. As it happens, vitamin C boosts iron absorption, allowing the body to take in more of it than if the mineral were introduced alone. When I first started studying nutrition, I became fascinated with these coincidences, realizing of course they're not coincidences. Human bodies and their complex digestive chemistry evolved over millenia in response to all the different foods
mostly plants
they raised or gathered from the land surrounding them. They may have died young from snakebite or blunt trauma, but they did not have diet-related illnesses like heart disease and Type II diabetes that are prevalent in our society now, even in some young adults and children. [from an entry by Barbara Kingsolver's daughter Camille] ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Your Mom's Car. Think about that. Try to wrap your brain around the supernatural and spiritual implications that the name bears down you. Your Mom's Car, holding its hand out straight, fingers curled, a zombie reaching for your neck. ~ Dan Chaon

As she read, she felt she was giving this story a new life of its own. It was no longer a reflection of her childhood and whatever happened within the Storm family. It was just a story, to be shared and enjoyed. ~ Phaedra Patrick

When you release a trauma on one level of your energetic being, you will experience relief on all other levels simultaneously. ~ Dashama Konah Gordon

Childhood trauma does not come in one single package. ~ Asa Don Brown

Trauma or no, I would have been trans no matter what body I'd been born with. Tell the doctors that we exist for the health of humanity, which needs to find wholeness and belief in complexity. Girl in boy's body or boy inside a girl; call it fate or biology, will, or spiritual choice. But I was not born in the wrong body.
-Scott Turner Schofield, The Wrong Body ~ Kate Bornstein S. Bear Bergman

There is nothing like the whites of someone's eyes to convince you how very true what you believe is, how very much you must act on it. ~ Jennine Capo Crucet

An emotionally abusive relationship, in very simplistic terms, is much like standing up in a too hot bath and sinking back in so as not to feel so dizzy. ~ Jackie Haze, Borderless

They feel guilty for having survived so they pretend the bad things never happened
Exodus (1960) screenplay ~ Dalton Trumbo

Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

The unconscious is the true accumulation of your history.
It can be accepted or rejected but it can't fundamentally be altered. ~ Stefan Molyneux

The path towards peace is not for the righteous, the ethical, the active and the compassionate to shit on the malicious, the complacent, the violent and the ignorant. The path towards peace is to be peaceful. ~ Ilyas Kassam