Top 70 Abuse Survivor Quotes
#1. You are NOT an abuse survivor or victim. Leave your labels elsewhere because they are no longer serving you.
Miya Yamanouchi
#2. I remember the pain I felt, and wonder why a man who was such an accomplished liar had to tell the truth that day.
Toni Maguire
#3. Most of our informants [incest survivors] remembered their mothers as weak and powerless, finding their only dignity in martyrdom.
Judith Lewis Herman
#4. Incest is almost always a devastating experience for
the victim.
Susan Forward
#5. As part of the healing process, change your perception of yourself from "victim" to that of "advocate" and "survivor.
Don Easton
#6. ...there is a particular focus of the problem faced only by men. It arises from our culture providing no room for a man as victim.
Mike Lew
#7. When I felt as though I had reached land, it was like I was on a deserted sandy beach, feeling isolated and afraid to share with anyone the memories that haunted me.
Erin Merryn
#8. I can sit in denial of my life because in looking around I see how lucky I am to have survived it.
K. Farrell St. Germain
#9. I was survivor of childhood sexual abuse in therapy for dissociated trauma memories.
Jeanne McElvaney
#10. 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
Diana Rasmussen
#12. I thought when the abuse stopped I could move on with my life. Instead I am still running from Brian. The only difference is now I am running from him in my dreams.
Erin Merryn
#13. Religion to me was only something to be used and abused, as it had done nothing for me other than give me pain. Religion for me was a method used to gain an extra bottle of wine or a nice meal.
Stephen Richards
#14. Coming to terms with incest is not easy. Learning to be a survivor, not a victim, gives new meaning to life
Lynette Gould
#15. I'm a survivor. And I say this with so much pride I could burst into a million tiny pieces at your feet.
Trish Kaye Lleone
#16. Just as much as the media portray child sexual exploitation as being a 'hidden' crime, then that is no less of a case with child physical abuse.
Stephen Richards
#17. I was used, fucked, broken, toyed with and violated from the age of six.
James Rhodes
#18. From a young boy's viewpoint this could not get any worse, especially when you were told that you belonged to the devil, and this bullying of me went on for a long time.
Stephen Richards
#19. When someone forces you - he unkindly borrows- he does not, can not own you- Remember your body, spirit and heart are yours and only yours, and when you start to process your sexual abuse you will get it all back.
Patti Feuereisen
#20. I was becoming a product of society, a hardened juvenile! Now I was becoming rebellious and hateful.
Stephen Richards
#21. It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how I come to know trees fear man.
Alice Walker
#22. I sometimes continue to see myself in split ways; it causes me trouble and contributes to a lack of satisfaction with myself.
Maureen Brady
#23. 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
#24. With regards pedophilia I have always looked on it as that ... pedophilia. I thought that one religion is no different to the other and I am now truthfully beginning to think that.
Stephen Richards
#25. From spending ten years in hell and coming to this regime of kindness was a shock. It was so much of a shock, it was unbelievable. I was like an untamed animal, I couldn't accept it and I just wouldn't accept it.
Stephen Richards
#26. Her wounds brought her a great source of power because they lived in the same place as her heart.
Shannon L. Alder
#28. You might think the Bangkok Hilton (the nickname of a fictional prison in Bangkok) was tough, well that was paradise compared to this place!
Stephen Richards
#29. I felt like I needed to comfort both the little girl inside me and my mother, assuring them that neither of them could have prevented the rape. I didn't want my mother to blame herself and I didn't want to blame the little girl inside of me for not speaking up at the age of six.
Erin Merryn
#30. People may not realize the damage that they are doing by placing the blame on the victim ~ but that doesn't lessen the damage that they cause by doing it.
Darlene Ouimet
#31. The bottom line was that I was in an abusive relationship.
Shannon Celebi
#32. When we first begin to take power more directly, after long having kept our relationship to it underground...it is natural that we experience anxiety, even guilt, at putting ourselves first. These feeling let us know we are taking action; they do not need to stop us.
Maureen Brady
#33. I am a whole person and have the potential to bring together all the different aspects of myself.
Maureen Brady
#34. While my sister and I were reminded we did not cause this pain, it was knowing that because we broke our silence about what had been done to us, our parents were hurting. That knowledge was hard on us.
Erin Merryn
#35. Healing isn't just about pain. It's about learning to love yourself. As you move from feeling like a victim to being a proud survivor, you will have glimmers of hope, pride and satisfaction. Those are natural by-products of healing.
Ellen Bass
#36. I think repressing what happened is what saved me in my childhood. I was able to use my imagination to create happy events, but a little girl can carry only so much on her own.
Erin Merryn
#37. Whenever I talk to survivors [of a domestic abuse relationship] who have lived through that and are on the other side and their whole perspective on life is a complete 180, I'm just so inspired.
Kerry Washington
#38. My mom called Grandma today and told her we would no longer be attending family parties. My mom told her we have had enough of being blamed for something Brian did and everyone brushing it off like it was no big deal.
Erin Merryn
#39. I have beaten people into the ground and the more they cry the more of a beating I gave them. If they don't cry, I come off, if they cry then I will beat them and beat them and beat them.
Stephen Richards
#40. About half of us dissociated our abuse at the moment it happened. We lived our days not knowing it happened ... or could happen again. But every survivor has shadows of their experience following them.
Jeanne McElvaney
#41. Someone once asked me how I hold my head up so high after all I have been through. I said it's because no matter what, I am a survivor NOT a victim.
Patricia Buckley
#42. I have to find a place to hide
An island in the sea
Surrounded by a racing tide
Where I can live with me
Laurie Matthew
#43. I look upon the gift of my life as a wondrous journey.
Maureen Brady
#44. I don't want you to have to handle it. That's the horror of my past. But you ... you're the reality of my present. You're the proof I survived. The prize in the cereal box.
J. Kenner
#45. It's been so long, I don't remember what okay feels like.
Kayla Krantz
#46. I can't get myself to say what happened next. I cannot cope with even thinking about this let alone living with it."
"It is so degrading and I try to forget, it hurts so much because she is my mother."
- Graham talks about being sexually abused by his mother
Carolyn Ainscough
#47. If we are taken all together, we might muster some courage, but from the previous evidence it is likely that we will be taken separately.
Edna O'Brien
#48. You may experience waves of disbelief after each memory you retrieve. Whether as a phase or waves, the disbelief is usually accompanied by massive self-hate and guilt. 'How can I even think such a thing? I must really be warped,' you tell yourself.
Renee Fredrickson
#49. So often parents of abused children feel helpless. When a child falls, and scrapes her knees parents can erase the hurt by kissing it and putting a Band-Aid on it, but not so with the pain of sexual abuse.
Erin Merryn
#50. There's an innocence to her still that amazes me. Sometimes I forget she's older than me. Then, I remember that she hasn't gone through what I've gone through.
Zoe Cruz
#51. While a psychiatric diagnosis can serve a purpose in treatment plans, it should not become a tool to discredit a person's disclosure of abuse.
Lee Ann Hoff
#52. Though all the daughters eventually succeeded in escaping from their families, they felt, even at this time of the interview (while in their 20s and 30s) that they would never be safe with their fathers, and that they would have to defend themselves as long as their fathers lived.
Judith Lewis Herman
#53. I spent many years trying to make up reasons about why I had the flashbacks, memories, continuous nightmares. When I finally decided to quit trying to hide from truth, I began to heal.
Karen Marshall
#54. I have avoided the fate my father planed for me, surely it is I who won not he.
Robin LaFevers
#55. A terrible sadness threatened to overwhelm me as I wondered how two people capable of such love for each other had eventually felt so little for the child they had produced between them.
Toni Maguire
#56. By opening the door to my life, it is my hope and mission to shed light on the hidden wounds of abuse, to end the stigma and shame associated with abuse, and to show survivors true courage, strength, inspiration, and determination.
Erin Merryn
#57. Miriam is upset. Her voice is stretched and I can't look at her. Perhaps they beat something out of her she didn't get back.
Anna Funder
#58. There is so much that is still silent between Jaja and me. Perhaps we will talk more with time, or perhaps we never will be able to say it all, to clothe things in words, things that have long been naked.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#59. He beat me when you not here, I say.
Who do, she say, Albert?
Mr , I say.
I can't believe it, she say. She sit down on the bench next to me real hard, like she drop.
What he beat you for? she ast.
For being me and not you.
Alice Walker
#60. A lot of attention has been given over to the Catholic Churches sexual abuse of children in their care, but this attention seems to have been hijacked by the media and has overshadowed the many thousands of victims that endured physical abuse.
Stephen Richards
#61. I dived out of the office and I was gone ... hitting these fields like a mad March hare. This wasn't Born Free, it was RUN FREE!
Stephen Richards
#62. I am building a healthy support system and learning to use it readily.
Maureen Brady
#63. Bound by Blood, Marked by the Dragonfly.
Lisa Akers
#64. No matter what tight corner I was in, I was capable of getting myself out of it ... not God!
Stephen Richards
#65. This book is dedicated to those who have died as a result of mind control and/or ritual abuse, and those who have lived when they would rather have died.
Alison Miller
#66. I value and honor the way that my suffering brings me to further search and surrender.
Maureen Brady
#67. I lived through this horror, and no one can tell me I have to stay quiet.
"I have been silenced long enough, and I will not allow that family to silence me again. I will continue to speak out and make sure my voice is heard.
Erin Merryn
#68. 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
Robert Uttaro
#69. As we move away from the old role in which we were helplessly entrapped as a victim, we make friends with the people who affirm us. Their enthusiasm about us mirrors the positive experience we are having.
Maureen Brady
#70. All these do-gooders make it sound like you just have to repent and off you go to heaven, but what about all the atrocities the Catholic religion did to us? Who pays for that! They just took over our lives!!
Stephen Richards
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