“Trauma isn’t just the sadness that comes from being beaten, or neglected, or insulted. That’s just one layer of it. Trauma also is mourning the childhood you could have had. The childhood other kids around you had.”
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
“But the sadness of a lost childhood feels like yearning, impossible desire. It feels like a hollow, insatiable hunger.”
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
“It’s okay to have some things you never get over.”
― What My Bones Know
― What My Bones Know
“It takes an intellectual and physical effort to shove aside the comfortably worn neural pathways and go in a different direction.”
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
“these negative emotions are not simply something to endure and erase. They are purposeful. Beneficial. They tell us what we need. Anger inspires action. Sadness is necessary to process grief. Fear helps keep us safe. Completely eradicating these emotions is not just impossible—it’s unhealthy. These negative emotions only become toxic when they block out all the other emotions. When we feel so much sadness that we can’t let any joy in. When we feel so much anger that we cannot soften around others. True mental health looks like a balance of these good and bad feelings. As Lori Gottlieb says in her book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, “Many people come to therapy seeking closure. Help me not to feel. What they eventually discover is that you can’t mute one emotion without muting the others. You want to mute the pain? You’ll also mute the joy.”
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
Lily’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Lily’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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