Martha

“Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think. We have discovered that helping victims of trauma find the words to describe what has happened to them is profoundly meaningful, but usually it is not enough. The act of telling the story doesn’t necessarily automatically alter the automatic physical and hormonal responses of bodies that remain hyper vigilant, prepared to be assaulted or violated at any time. For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present.”
― Bessel van der Kolk MD, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“Brother was gone and he wouldn’t be back. And things that had been so before would never be so again. We were the way we were, nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves.”
― Wendell Berry, Nathan Coulter

“You think my lady was off her head because she found time, in the middle of all her own troubles, to think about an old chap who had worked for her for sixty years. That shows how little you know. There’s still room for a bit of kindness in the world, and the next time you feel like taking a short cut across people’s feelings when you want you get somewhere in a hurry, you might bear that in mind.”
― Reginald Arkell, Old Herbaceous

“I must summon all the Phylosophy I am mistress of since what cannot be help’d must be endured.”
― Natalie S. Bober, Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution