David Taransaud > Quotes

“Children of depressed mothers suffer a multitude of losses. There’s the loss of the mother’s love and of the mother herself: a mother who’s still alive but psychically dead in the eyes of the child. There’s the loss of belonging and safety, of self and authenticity. And as unmet needs accumulate, the children suffer the loss of self-worth, purpose and meaning in life. Unlike death, these losses tend to go unrecognised. There’s no certificate, no wake and no funeral or scattering of ashes to help with the grieving process. As a result, there’s no closure, no healing and no moving forward – just a heart that hurts, the constant presence of an absence and an urge to fill the void with mother substitutes. Children who have had their hearts broken over and over again are left with a terrible grief that never seems to go away.”
― David Taransaud, Sad Belly: Helping Children of Depressed Parents Build Resilience

“Hurt people don’t just hurt other people, they’re also very good at hurting themselves.”
― David Taransaud, Sad Belly: Helping Children of Depressed Parents Build Resilience

“These children do not need to be fixed, they need to be found. They need to be seen, known, heard and understood. Only then will they be able to slowly let go of what their upbringing has conditioned them to be, only then will they feel safe to be themselves, accept themselves and make room inside for love to enter.”
― David Taransaud, Sad Belly: Helping Children of Depressed Parents Build Resilience

“In the beginning, the mother is everything to the child. When her care is reliable and consistent, he experiences himself as the centre of a loving world. But when the child is not everything to the mother, it’s not just his world that turns cold and empty but something within the child himself. He starts to take on his mother’s depression as his own.”
― David Taransaud, Sad Belly: Helping Children of Depressed Parents Build Resilience

“What hides in the dark is what wasn’t loved enough. Darkness is where we go to find the lost parts of ourselves, and if you look hard enough you can also find hope in there.”
― David Taransaud, Sad Belly: Helping Children of Depressed Parents Build Resilience

“There are two kinds of silence between a mother and a child. One is the silence of intimacy, filled with aliveness, soft like warm chocolate; the other is the cold silence of an absence, a kind of numb grief, heavy as lead. It is the silence of a ‘dead mother’ and the child who sacrifices all to revive her.”
― David Taransaud, Sad Belly: Helping Children of Depressed Parents Build Resilience