Mark Danowsky

“chronic illness—mental or physical—is to a large extent a function or feature of the way things are and not a glitch; a consequence of how we live, not a mysterious aberration.”
― Gabor Maté, 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.”
― Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

“If we could begin to see much illness itself not as a cruel twist of fate or some nefarious mystery but rather as an expected and therefore normal consequence of abnormal, unnatural circumstances, it would have revolutionary implications for how we approach everything health related.”
― Gabor Maté, 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?”
― Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture