Elena

“Because the symptoms and emotions associated with trauma can be extreme, most of us (and those close to us) will recoil and attempt to repress these intense reactions. Unfortunately, this mutual denial can prevent us from healing. In our culture there is a lack of tolerance for the emotional vulnerability that traumatized people experience. Little time is allotted for the working through of emotional events. We are routinely pressured into adjusting too quickly in the aftermath of an overwhelming situation. Denial is so common in our culture that it has become a cliché.”
― Peter A. Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma

“psychoanalysis gets interesting when it shifts the focus from making us more intelligible to ourselves to helping us become more curious about how strange we really are. And so, I would argue, does art.”
― Maggie Nelson, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning

“We have not yet heard enough, if anything, about the female gaze. About the scorch of it.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“To listen with an open heart and ask questions to better help us understand the other person is a spiritual exercise, in the truest sense of the word.”
― Harriet Lerner, Why Won’t You Apologize?: Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts