Survivor Of Abuse Quotes

#1. 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

#2. I was used, fucked, broken, toyed with and violated from the age of six.

James Rhodes

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. I was survivor of childhood sexual abuse in therapy for dissociated trauma memories.

Jeanne McElvaney

#7. 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

#8. ...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

#9. As part of the healing process, change your perception of yourself from "victim" to that of "advocate" and "survivor.

Don Easton

#10. Most of our informants [incest survivors] remembered their mothers as weak and powerless, finding their only dignity in martyrdom.

Judith Lewis Herman

#11. 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

#12. I am a whole person and have the potential to bring together all the different aspects of myself.

Maureen Brady

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. Closeness was the promise of suffering and pain

Alice Jamieson

#16. Her wounds brought her a great source of power because they lived in the same place as her heart.

Shannon L. Alder

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. I sometimes continue to see myself in split ways; it causes me trouble and contributes to a lack of satisfaction with myself.

Maureen Brady

#20. I was becoming a product of society, a hardened juvenile! Now I was becoming rebellious and hateful.

Stephen Richards

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. 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

#28. I look upon the gift of my life as a wondrous journey.

Maureen Brady

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. No matter what tight corner I was in, I was capable of getting myself out of it ... not God!

Stephen Richards

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. 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