Amy Griffin > Quotes

“He was so forthright and so clear. I had never heard him share this truth publicly. I studied him, wondering why the party line had changed, and so dramatically. It was a reminder that multiple stories could be true at the same time, that we select our narratives in accordance with how honest we want to be and how honest we can be with ourselves.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“Remembering was so hard, but now I understood why we did it—why it was worth remembering at all. It wasn’t so we could wallow in the pain. It was so we could more fully touch the joy.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“Memory is a sieve that catches only the most important moments. The insignificant details of daily life don’t stick; instead, they flow through the sieve. Then there are experiences that are unusual, set apart from the everyday, that carry an emotional charge. These we often hold on to, turning them over and over.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“It was a reminder that multiple stories could be true at the same time, that we select our narratives in accordance with how honest we want to be and how honest we can be with ourselves.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“There was an essential me that no abuse could ever harm. The me before I felt that I had to be perfect. The me before I felt shame. The me that wanted to be kind, not as a distraction of what was happening to me, but simply because it was the purest expression of love I knew. All of that was always within me. That was what I had to remember.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“We have to make the unconscious conscious, or it will direct our life and we will call it fate.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“I was learning how to be self-sufficient, and in being self-sufficient, I would be safe.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“Even if facing it is hard, it’s also so important. I thought of this as something I was running from. But in running from that, I was also running from the best things this life has to offer—freedom and happiness and real relationships with the people around me. You can’t have light without the darkness. You have to feel all of it in order to feel any of it.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“The day of the session, she sat across from me on the couch. “I’m hoping this brings you more resolution,” she said in her gentle, accented voice. “Remember to be compassionate with yourself. You don’t have to go in looking for anything. What you need to know, you’ll find.” I nodded. “One reason we do this work is so we can face whatever it is that we need to face,” she said. “So we can live with what we’ve been through, instead of living from it.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“Women are always doing things so we can be better for other people. My relationships had changed for the better, but I didn’t do it for anyone else. I did it for me.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“It was like my body knew something that I didn’t.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“But I understood that it was only through the telling that I had set myself free.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“The secret was so big I could not ignore it, and yet the size of it made it impossible to see.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“Perfect—the way every parent loves their child, not for anything they’ve done but just for being who they are.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“You will never know how beautifully your words landed and lifted me up in moments of deep despair.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“My fear of slowing down long enough to listen to what my body might say.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“was taught to prioritize the comfort of others and not to share anything overly personal. But I have learned that the more I tell my”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“And yet it was John with whom I’d gotten so upset because his love made it safe for me to be angry. With all these other men, I couldn’t allow myself the indulgence of my rage. I had cosigned their bad behavior with my southern gentility for too long. Enough was enough. —”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“But recovery was an ocean, and I was learning how to swim.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“There was that word again—“perfect.” It was a word that held a lot of charge for me. For years, when someone described me or my life that way, I’d reject or deflect the characterization. “I don’t know what perfect even means,” I’d say. The word felt crass. I never wanted anyone to notice my quest for perfection or to call me out for it. I’d always try to be like a duck: seeming to glide across the water effortlessly but frantically paddling my feet beneath the surface in order to stay afloat. I’d worked so hard to keep everyone happy, to do right by everyone, to never let the ball drop. I was always the first to volunteer, the first to deny my own needs to ensure someone else’s comfort. But where had that gotten me? All that running had left me ragged—“nice but not real,” as Gigi had said. I didn’t want to model that for my daughters. I’d never want them to feel they couldn’t truly be themselves.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“Growing up in the South, you understand quickly the ocean that separates appearance and reality, particularly for women.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“Remembering is so much better than not remembering. Telling is so much better than not telling.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“My vulnerability was not a weakness. It was the greatest gift I could give them.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“Surviving abuse should have sensitized us to it, and yet the very fact of our survival made it more difficult for us to see it, in our own lives or in the lives of others. It wasn’t as simple as knowing or not knowing.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“My mother modeled kindness and my father modeled achievement.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“How did I know that this was what I needed to do? Even now, I don’t really understand it. I just knew that I had built up walls, and I did not know how to tear them down. I knew that I was tired of running. And I knew that I could not hide in the vastness of the life I had built any longer—a life so big that I’d disappeared in it.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“I felt a new sense of freedom. But this freedom wasn’t what I’d felt as a little girl on my banana-seat bike; the definition had changed. Back then, freedom was a kind of abandon—wild, reckless, unselfconscious. Now I felt free when I could control every detail, from the temperature to the song on the stereo to where I would go next.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“So what are you going to do now?” she asked. “Well, I was working on pursuing legal action against the man who raped me,” I said. “But it turns out that I can’t. It’s very disappointing for me, because I wanted to be able to tell you that he could never hurt anyone else ever again. I wanted to tell you that I had solved the problem, that I’d taken care of it. But that’s not what happened.” “Oh, I didn’t mean like that,” Gigi said. “I mean, how are you going to get better?” I was caught off guard. “There’s so much I’ve been doing to heal,” I said. “Trying to slow down. Taking a bath every day. Feeling the sunlight on my face. Trying to notice things, even little things, like the colors of the leaves changing and the sound of them crunching under my feet. Have you noticed I’ve been going for a lot of walks lately?” “I think so,” she said. “And you’re not running anymore.” “That’s right,” I said. “I’m not.”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir

“It can be hard to see the big picture, especially when you are down in the dirt,”
― Amy Griffin, The Tell: A Memoir