Thaya

“Love is not dead, I am not dead, I still have faith in people. Once that was my greatest weakness, now it is my strength, my revenge.”
― Gisèle Pelicot, A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides

“And I could see that the cost for feeling safe was being controlled. They were two sides of the same coin—protection and control.”
― Belle Burden, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

“I had to squeeze past [the fifty defendants who had raped her] during breaks in the proceedings. I heard them talking, not even bothering to lower their voices, naturally buoyed by male camaraderie. I saw them high-fiving each other, chatting at the bar, buying rounds of beer, laughing. They bonded with each other simple because they were convinced they had done nothing wrong. And yet they didn't resemble one another . . . But they did share one thing: a sense of entitlement. An attitude of complete indifference to whatever anyone said or thought, because power had always been on their side.”
― Gisèle Pelicot

“I hope because I was open about what happened to me, my children will insist on intimacy, on knowing their partner deeply, on being known deeply. I hope they will talk to their partners about money, about what will happen if the partnership ends. I hope that as they build trust in their relationships, they never lose sight of their own authority, their own voice, their own intuition. I hope they will move toward people who are in pain, rather than away. I hope they will understand that every person has experiences that make them who they are. I hope they will fall in love with abandon as I did with their father. I hope they will know, from watching me, that if everything falls apart, they can get up and piece together something new.”
― Belle Burden, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage