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“health is outside of our body.”
― The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
― The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
“It doesn’t matter whether we can point to other people who seem more traumatized than we are, for there is no comparing suffering. Nor is it appropriate to use our own trauma as a way of placing ourselves above others—“You haven’t suffered like I have”—or as a cudgel to beat back others’ legitimate grievances when we behave destructively. We each carry our wounds in our own way; there is neither sense nor value in gauging them against those of others.”
― The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
― The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
“One of the things many diseases have in common is inflammation, acting as kind of a fertilizer for the development of illness. We’ve discovered that when people feel threatened, insecure—especially over an extended period of time—our bodies are programmed to turn on inflammatory genes.”
― The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
― The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
“The late David Foster Wallace, master wordsmith, author, and essayist, once opened a commencement speech with a droll parable that well illustrates the trouble with normality. The story concerns two fish crossing aquatic paths with an elder of their species, who greets them jovially: “‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?”
― The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture
― The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture
Mark’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Mark’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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