Katie Vanesch

“What doesn’t kill you leaves disfiguring scars
What doesn’t kill you fills you with paralyzing self-hatred
What doesn’t kill you makes you an unfit mother  
What doesn’t kill you makes it all so hard
What doesn’t kill you wakes you up in the middle of the night
What doesn’t kill you turns you into an alcoholic
What doesn’t kill you makes you do unforgivable things to the people you love
What doesn’t kill you makes you afraid for the rest of your life
What doesn’t kill you might make you kill them”
― Clementine von Radics, Mouthful of Forevers

“When you have a persistent sense of heartbreak and gutwrench, the physical sensations become intolerable and we will do anything to make those feelings disappear. And that is really the origin of what happens in human pathology. People take drugs to make it disappear, and they cut themselves to make it disappear, and they starve themselves to make it disappear, and they have sex with anyone who comes along to make it disappear and once you have these horrible sensations in your body, you’ll do anything to make it go away.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk

“As the ACE study has shown, child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“You never need to apologize for how you choze to survive.”
― Clementine von Radics