Artemis Stardust

“Once the mother comes to see the child not as her partner in an attuned relationship but as a frustrating, enraging, disconnected stranger, the stage is set for subsequent abuse…[citing two related studies in 1996 and 2003 led by Karlen Lyons-Ruth] Emotional withdrawal had the most profound and lasting impact. Emotional distance and role reversal (in which mothers expected the kids to look after them) were specifically linked to aggressive behavior against self and others in the young adults…Lyons-Ruth concludes that infants who are not truly seen and known by their mothers are at high risk to grow into adolescents who are unable to known and to see.”
― Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score / Trauma and Recovery / Hidden Healing Powers

“As long as a memory is inaccessible, the mind is unable to change it. But as soon as a story starts being told, particularly if it is told repeatedly, it changes – the act of telling itself changes the tale. The mind cannot help but make meaning out of what it knows, and the meaning we make of our lives changes how and what we remember.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“Social change is a million individual acts of kindness; culture change is a million subversive acts of resistance.”
― Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“Sometimes I imagine aliens from a distant
planet swinging by Earth
taking one glance at our art
and zooming away as they whisper
What the fuck”
― Olivia A. Cole