2026 Reading Challenge

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  • #1
    Sarah Winman
    “And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.”
    ― Sarah Winman, Tin Man
    tags: grief, healing, heartbreak, love, pain
    193 likes

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  • #2
    Sarah Winman
    “There's something about first love, isn't there? she said. It's untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it's the measure of all that follows.”
    ― Sarah Winman, Tin Man
    tags: love
    87 likes

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  • #3
    Sarah Winman
    “I haven't cried. But sometimes I feel as if my veins are leaking, as if my body is overwhelmed, as if I'm drowning from the inside.”
    ― Sarah Winman, Tin Man
    tags: grief
    60 likes

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  • #4
    Sarah Winman
    “Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things.”
    ― Sarah Winman, Tin Man
    tags: boys, men
    40 likes

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  • #5
    Sarah Winman
    “I said to him that just because you can’t remember, doesn’t mean the past isn’t out there. All those precious moments are still there somewhere.”
    ― Sarah Winman, Tin Man
    tags: past
    30 likes

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  • #6
    Sarah Winman
    “I’m broken by my need for others. By the erotic dance of memory that pounces when loneliness falls.”
    ― Sarah Winman, Tin Man
    tags: memory
    19 likes

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  • #7
    Sarah Winman
    “And I remember thinking, how cruel it was that our plans were out there somewhere. Another version of our future, out there somewhere, in perpetual orbit.”
    ― Sarah Winman, Tin Man
    33 likes

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  • #8
    Henry Rollins
    “I'll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does.”
    ― Henry Rollins, The Portable Henry Rollins
    tags: depression, loneliness
    1468 likes

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  • #9
    Bessel van der Kolk
    “If your parents’ faces never lit up when they looked at you, it’s hard to know what it feels like to be loved and cherished. If you come from an incomprehensible world filled with secrecy and fear, it’s almost impossible to find the words to express what you have endured. If you grew up unwanted and ignored, it is a major challenge to develop a visceral sense of agency and self-worth.”
    ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
    tags: abuse, fear, love, neglect, parental-abuse, parenting, ptsd, secrecy, self-esteem, trauma
    137 likes

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  • #10
    Jessica Stern
    “Some people's lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That's what trauma does. It interrupts the plot. You can't process it because it doesn't fit with what came before or what comes afterwards.”
    ― Jessica Stern
    tags: denial, ptsd, trauma
    94 likes

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  • #11
    Solange nicole
    “There comes a time when something changes you... No matter the impact... Where the world no longer beats in time with you. You no longer feel amongst the fray.. And the feeling of loneliness is a brandished armor you wear the rest of your life.”
    ― Solange nicole
    tags: darkness, depression, isolation, life-lessons, loneliness, pain, perspective, sadness, trauma
    34 likes

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  • #12
    John Bradshaw
    “Shame is internalized when one is abandoned. Abandonment is the precise term to describe how one loses one’s authentic self and ceases to exist psychologically.”
    ― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You
    tags: abuse, healing, psychology, toxic, toxic-shame, trauma
    40 likes

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  • #13
    Sarah Noffke
    “No one ever told me how sorrow traumatizes your heart, making you think it will never beat exactly the same way again. No one ever told me how grief feels like a wet sock in my mouth. One I’m forced to breathe through, thinking that with each breath I’ll come up short and suffocate.”
    ― Sarah Noffke, Awoken
    tags: grief-and-loss, heart, heart-break, heartbroken, sorrow, suffocate, trauma
    64 likes

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  • #14
    “TRAUMA STEALS YOUR VOICE

    People get so tired of asking you what's wrong and you've run out of nothings to tell them.

    You've tried and they've tried, but the words just turn to ashes every time they try to leave your mouth.

    They start as fire in the pit of your stomach, but come out in a puff of smoke.

    You are not you anymore.

    And you don't know how to fix this.

    The worst part is...you don't even know how to try.”
    ― nikitta gill
    tags: posttraumatic-stress-disorder, ptsd, survivors, trauma, trauma-survivors, traumatized, voiceless
    14 likes

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  • #15
    Stefan Molyneux
    “Mental anguish always results from the avoidance of legitimate suffering.”
    ― Stefan Molyneux
    tags: abuse, avoidance, child-abuse, denial, psychology, trauma
    77 likes

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  • #16
    Judith Lewis Herman
    “After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.”
    ― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
    tags: anxiety, danger, hypervigilance, jumpy, posttraumatic-stress-disorder, ptsd, self-preservation, startled, trauma, traumatized
    142 likes

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  • #17
    Catherine Clément
    “The hysteric, whose body is transformed into a theatre for forgotten scenes, relives the past, bearing witness to a lost childhood that survived in suffering.”
    ― Catherine Clément, The Newly Born Woman
    tags: childhood-trauma, feminism, hysteria, trauma
    10 likes

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  • #18
    Mark Goulston
    “Unlike simple stress, trauma changes your view of your life and yourself. It shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world — “Life is good,” “I’m safe,” “People are kind,” “I can trust others,” “The future is likely to be good” — and replaces them with feelings like “The world is dangerous,” “I can’t win,” “I can’t trust other people,” or “There’s no hope.”
    ― Mark Goulston MD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder For Dummies
    tags: dangerous-world, lack-of-trust, post-traumatic-stress-disorder, posttraumatic-stress-disorder, ptsd, sense-of-self, shattered-souls, stress, trauma, traumatic-stress, work-view
    53 likes

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  • #19
    Justin Ordoñez
    “Outside, the sun shines. Inside, there’s only darkness. The blackness is hard to describe, as it’s more than symptoms. It’s a nothing that becomes everything there is. And what one sees is only a fraction of the trauma inflicted.”
    ― Justin Ordoñez, Sykosa
    tags: blackness, everything, nothing, sykosa, trauma
    17 likes

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  • #20
    “I knew I did not deserve help, because this was not real trauma. He was a kid, not a criminal. Accomplished, not dangerous. He was the one who lost everything. I was just the nobody it happened to.”
    ― Chanel Miller, Know My Name
    tags: sexual-abuse-survivor, trauma
    19 likes

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  • #21
    Sylvia Plath
    “I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn't see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.”
    ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
    tags: darkness, look-forward, night, pillow, pretend, sleep, sylvia-plath, the-bell-jar
    411 likes

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  • #22
    Thomas Bernhard
    “I barricaded myself and stared out the window, without seeing anything but my own unhappiness.”
    ― Thomas Bernhard, The Loser
    tags: barricade, depression, isolation, unhappiness, window
    27 likes



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Tags From sm’s Quotes

grief
healing
heartbreak
love
pain
boys
men
past
memory
depression
loneliness
abuse
fear
neglect
parental-abuse
parenting
ptsd
secrecy
self-esteem
trauma
denial
darkness
isolation
life-lessons
perspective
sadness
psychology
toxic
toxic-shame
grief-and-loss
heart
heart-break
heartbroken
sorrow
suffocate
posttraumatic-stress-disorder
survivors
trauma-survivors
traumatized
voiceless
avoidance
child-abuse
anxiety
danger
hypervigilance
jumpy
self-preservation
startled
childhood-trauma
feminism
hysteria
dangerous-world
lack-of-trust
post-traumatic-stress-disorder
sense-of-self
shattered-souls
stress
traumatic-stress
work-view
blackness
everything
nothing
sykosa
sexual-abuse-survivor
look-forward
night
pillow
pretend
sleep
sylvia-plath
the-bell-jar
barricade
unhappiness
window