Nancy Richards > Quotes

“In order to grieve—I needed to “unlearn” the way I learned to ignore my agony.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“In the limousine on the way to my father’s graveside services, I started to cry. My mother slapped me and told me to stop crying. I lacked a model to show me how to feel compassion for my pain.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“I feel more at peace with being angry than practicing forgiveness. That never was an honest emotion for me. It was always someone else’s concept of what I should do.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. —Antoine de Saint Exupery”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“I never learned how to process my own pain.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Silence damages the victim and only serves to nourish the abuse and shield the wrongdoer from accountability. Simply put—silence aids the abuser.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“I was starved for attention, while she insisted I didn’t like to be hugged.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“One of the most dangerous things about forgiveness is that it undercuts your ability to let go of your pent-up emotions.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Well,” he said with a sigh, “psychology for years used to counsel to forgive. But we are beginning to recognize that it isn’t always possible or even healthy to do that. I believe that sometimes it is important not to forgive, and to hang onto a healthy sort of rage at what happened,”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Through all this, I poured myself into the care of the girls, jealously guarding their well-being and providing them with a safe and loving environment. I delighted in their healthy, sturdy bodies and minds, as I watched them turning from little girls into adolescence, making all my efforts pay off by becoming happy, “normal” kids.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Thomas just nodded his head in agreement, and then suggested I write a letter to myself as a child and address those painful issues.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“I didn’t understand the experience of receiving empathy, or that I could even successfully seek empathy.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Forgiveness is not a commodity that can be handed out. It is a relationship that must be entered into. — Karl Rahner”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“How devastating to be hated by one’s own mother.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Grieving and Mourning. As children being abused, and later as adults struggling to survive, most survivors haven’t felt their losses. Grieving is a way to honor your pain, let go, and move into the present.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“My grandmother accused me of hurting my mother. Other relatives accused me of being an ungrateful child. Mom said I was mean and cruel and had hurt her deeply. Still impressionable and my spirits tottering under the load of the pain from the past, I accepted the notion that I was that selfish and ungrateful daughter, careless of my mother’s feelings.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Sometimes you just have to take the leap, and build your wings on the way down. —Kobi Yamada”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Ann said, “My father died when he was seventy-seven, still unable to forgive his mother.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“I had been conditioned to down play my own abuse,”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“How do you forgive someone who has never asked to be forgiven; somebody who has never even acknowledged any wrongdoing, someone who continues to do the same thing? How do you forgive an offender and still protect yourself from re-injury?”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Is there anything you want to tell your father?” “I want to tell him that I don’t want him to die.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“When we have been betrayed in our most basic human relationship—and that trust is never restored—how can we learn to trust ourselves to respond appropriately to betrayal?”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Grandpa pleaded with Grandma, “Stop it Opal! Stop it. Nancy was a wonderful child.” Grandma ignored his pleas and said as she left the room, “I’m disgusted with you, and I suppose this is the end of our friendship.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“She explains that siblings are often the least supportive of anyone because even though the same parent has also damaged them, they are often in so much denial that they are threatened by your attempts to recover”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Nevertheless, when we fail to investigate and/or believe the victim, we become complicit with the abuse.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“In childhood as well as adulthood, each time I shared my feelings with someone, the chosen confidant denied my perceptions”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“Imprisoned by silence, my emotions turned to slush.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“With his passing, it seemed the sun stopped shining on our family.”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing

“It’s okay to be angry. Your mother should not have allowed this to happen....”
― Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing