Brenda Davies > Quotes

“If you fall out of the boat put your feet up, lie back and relax. Your life jacket knows which way is up. Let the river hold you. You won't drown." -Zambezi River Guide.”
― Brenda Davies, 7 Healing Chakras: Unlocking Your Body's Energy Centers

“Nora is home in herself at last. She has won. And as Janet listens and watches, and knows that her work here is complete, she rejoices. This is what it’s all about. This is the goal. This is the reward. They hold each other’s eyes. No longer doctor and patient, but just two women, equals.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“the measure of our greatness is in how we stand up after we fall”.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“all men, just of different cultures, wearing different uniforms, having different-coloured skins perhaps, but simply men nevertheless”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Untethered from the life she had blithely looked forward to, she is adrift, her bearings lost. There is no safe harbour in sight. She listens to the silence and it fills her with foreboding.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Memories always have several parts – an emotional bit, a physical bit and a psychological bit. And when something awful happens, we feel shocked, and the memory of it gets split into those parts and some of them seem to get lost altogether. Then we don’t really know what’s happened because we can’t remember it properly. But actually, all the pieces are there somewhere. And, to get well, we need to find them all and see if we can put them back together again, so we can finally deal with what really happened.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Layers of dreams, fragments of conversation, half-forgotten encounters – the dust motes of her life – hang in the air, then ignite torrents of emotion long buried but never extinguished. Whips of pain, shards of sadness, wisps of joy, snatches of delight, recollected passion. All arise and fade, bruising her painful mind, denuded of its defences. ‘Am I ever going to get out of here?’ she whispers.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“foetus. In the beginning her wailing would be tolerated for a short while”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“There are still times, of course, when the pain rears its head again, though they’re less often these days. Whenever it does, she wraps herself in a crocheted blanket, curls up with her feet up beside her – now there’s no one to say she mustn’t – and watches television. And no one shouts at her when she sits all day working her way through a shelf full of books. Paradise!”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“As we grow up, ideally we develop a part of us that we could call our “inner parent”. Its job is to always champion and take care of that vulnerable child part of us, whatever happens.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Sometimes flashbacks may still recur for a long time, and they can leave you feeling exhausted and sometimes embarrassed about your behaviour. But hopefully you’ll learn to be patient with yourself and tell the pain that it’s only a memory; that it’s not happening now; that you’ve survived.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“She is standing in a garden trying to peg together scraps of memory on a washing line, but the wind snatches them away, scattering them out of her reach.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“lest she be blown away by a capricious wind.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“We can’t undo what’s been done, but sometimes with hindsight we can see it differently. That goes for the things people have done to us and the things that we, ourselves, have done too. And, since blame doesn’t really help, and neither does guilt, hopefully, over time, we’ll be able to banish both these things. If we can do that, it allows us to take responsibility for who we are and where we are, and that gives us the power to move forward.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“proudly”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“I’m inspired by your courage, to say nothing of your wisdom and your beauty as a human being. Sometimes places like this destroy those things, but even though you’ve lost so much, here you are, whole, standing on your own. From tomorrow, you can choose.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“I’ve spent many an hour with an inner argument about armed conflict, trying to distinguish the act of killing from the act of murder – the one apparently being worthy of honour and praise and the other of punishment and disgrace.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Nora awakes suddenly, her mouth bitter with the unfamiliar taste that she takes a minute to identify as loneliness. Not aloneness. Not solitude. Utter isolation. A pit of nothingness.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Janet”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“think and talk and act rather than react,”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“It is she who is offering compassion to Janet. Compassion and gratitude in equal parts.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“blame”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Eventually she cut her own feelings off so that she could bear to do what needed to be done and, by default, she became an untrained, unpaid, excellent, if granite-hearted nurse.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Then, at last, morning approaches, the world wakes up and it’s not so bad. She fills her kettle and lights the little gas stove, sets out her cup, sniffs yesterday’s milk and gives thanks that she’s survived another night of ‘freedom’.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“knocking over one of her friends in her dash”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“sometimes with hindsight we can see it differently. That goes for the things people have done to us and the things that we, ourselves, have done too. And, since blame doesn’t really help, and neither does guilt, hopefully, over time, we’ll be able to banish both these things. If we can do that, it allows us to take responsibility for who we are and where we are, and that gives us the power to move forward.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“just a state of nothingness.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“How can a broken heart keep on breaking?”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“Robert?”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates

“All these people with wounds tracing back to their childhoods. Lost potential. Lost relationships. Lost peace of mind. The ripples from long-ago traumas still disturbing the waters of the present.”
― Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates