Michael Kravets

“The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind — of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. For most people this involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused, (2) learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around you, (4) not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you have managed to survive.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“I’d lived long enough to understand that every family had its share of tragedy, large or small. No one got a free pass from heartache.”
― Paula Treick DeBoard, The Mourning Hours

“Some stories won't have a happy ending, but there's always hope that the next one will. Hope is everything. Even when there's nothing else. Especially when there's nothing else.”
― Clara Kensie, Aftermath

“The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown