Recovery Quotes

Slowly, inch by inch, I felt myself recovering. After a few weeks, the darkness began to recede; my appetite for life returned. Haven was wonderful; she understood and nursed me through these weeks until I felt strong enough to go out in public, to get on my bike again.

~ Tyler Hamilton

I wanted to say all these things about how you just have to hold on to the things you love and let go of all the rest.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

There had been a subtle realignment of the spheres. The world was somehow a place I could endure again. If life was a grey corridor lined with doors, it was now within my power to open some of them.

~ Alexis Hall

One reason we're not winning the fight against depression is that our available treatments leave so many in partial recovery limbo.

~ Jonathan Rottenberg

I’ve been married but I’m not anymore. And I still believe in love.

~ Nick Saint Clair

I felt like I was being carried over the threshold of a sisterhood of loss. I knew I was not walking alone, and that eventually I would bob back up to the surface of the deep, because the women around me showed me what healing looks like.

~ Anna White

Sometimes you have to cross the boundaries of Death in order to discover the meaning of Life.

~ B.g. Bowers

I've had a lot of therapists, so I've had the opportunity to approach my fear in many different ways. I've faced it head on and sideways and tried to tiptoe up behind it.

~ Anna White

I walked to Mairangi Bay beach, day after day, seeking companionship in the roar of the ocean, and contemplating the shipwreck of my life. There, in that isolated wilderness, amidst the screaming gulls, and consistent rhythm of the tides, I channeled my chaotic thoughts through my pen and released them into poetry, until the quiet desperation passed and I was secure in the knowledge that I had made it through another day.

~ B.g. Bowers

Hit the bottom and get back up, or hit the bottle and stay down.

~ Anthony Liccione

Other flowers came at the end of the summer, but by then the winter sadness had already dissipated, and the effect of the blooms was not the same.

~ Jessica Stern

An engaging examination of a painful subject, with a focus on healing and forgiveness. - Kirkus Review

~ Robert Uttaro

Some of the most effective segments are interviews with various staff members, including Aila, who works for the center’s legal department. She explains the difficulties of rape prosecution, concluding that “only the survivor” can truly define justice. - Kirkus Review

~ Robert Uttaro

Always know there are friends somewhere rooting for you. There are people you don’t know, always praying for you and lifting you before God. - Jenee, from To the Survivors.

~ Robert Uttaro

I think I just said it, but I think it’s worth repeating. They gave me hope that there is good in the world out there. There really is. It really does exist. Regardless of how bad things can be, and how down on your luck you can be, or how bad your trust is broken when it comes to warming up to people and all that stuff, I know that there’s people out there that genuinely wanna help. Putting yourself in that position is a huge step, and it’s a very risky and fragile step, but it’s also a step that needs to be taken because there is help. And you can get through something like this. You really can. - Jim, from To the Survivors

~ Robert Uttaro

Waiting to be 'better' is the wrong approach. It's learning to live with it.

~ Marian Keyes

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre.

~ Andy Behrman

An intensely gripping narrative...expertly crafted and totally addictive...a must read!

~ Maggie Reese

Hershey Pennsylvania was self-proclaimed as the “Sweetest Place On Earth,” but less advertised than chocolate, it was also home to one of the state’s largest Children’s Hospitals. The streets lined with Hershey Kiss–shaped streetlamps that led excited children and families on vacation to chocolate tour rides and rollercoasters were the same exact streets that led anxious children and families to x-rays and MRIs on the worsts days of their lives. Chocolate was being created on the same street that childhood diseases were being diagnosed. And that was life. The sweetest of sensations and the deepest of devastations live next door to each other.

~ Tessa Shaffer

When we leave this life, we only get to take two things: the love we received and the lessons we learned.

~ David W. Earle

There was no sudden, striking, and emotional transition. Like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight. When you first notice them they have already been going on for some time.

~ C.s. Lewis

We are in this together. None of us truly walk in isolation, even when we cannot sense the presence of another for miles upon miles. Even in the worst of our desolation. Even during our coldest 3am breakdown. Even when we shut out the world and spin in circles until we collapse. Even then the light still gets in. Even then the heart still opens and reaches, tendrils of hope curling and bending toward slivers of light. Upward, outward, in all directions – seeking light at all cost. One way or another, we all grow toward the light.

~ Jeanette Leblanc

There is a certain kind of darkness that seeps into our lives if we are not actively engaged in creating light.

~ Marta Mrotek

Eating disorder recovery becomes possible when you keep making the next right decision over and over. With time, these decisions become automatic.

~ Brittany Burgunder

Black and white thinking limits understanding and feedback, two necessary ingredients for successful resolution in creative conflict and successful understanding.

~ David W. Earle

The strange part about a person’s lack of trust is that it often comes from not trusting themselves.

~ David W. Earle

When you wear a mask, you are not real.

~ David W. Earle

Honoring your word is the fiber from which trust is built.

~ David W. Earle

In order for a person to be able to “turn our lives and our wills” over requires something very difficult for a spiritually wounded person to accomplish - Trust. Yet, to accomplish this step, trust of the spirit must be present.

~ David W. Earle

There are two ways of thinking. One is living life based on fear. The other is trusting. Letting go and allowing trust to control our lives takes mental gymnastics.

~ David W. Earle

When I deny the seriousness of my abuse I agree with my abuser and those who wouldn't acknowledge it. When I am in denial, I have the tendency to minimize my abuse, believe the lies others have said, as well as deny it ever happened. It is important for me to remember as much detail as I can so I can trust my own perceptions of what really happened and not depend on the validations from others.

~ Patty Hite

Why couldn’t I find one action that would make the need to binge automatically disappear? Because there is no magic action to make that horrible prebinge feeling go away. The cool thing is that we are designed so that the feeling will pass through us on its own—in time. All we have to do is sit there and feel what is going on inside of us. We must experience the feelings. To help us deal with the feelings, we can call someone on our support team. We can also express the feelings by focusing on our breath or even hitting a pillow. The important thing to remember is that no matter how terrible, feelings do pass. It takes patience and trust—not food . . .

~ Jenni Schaefer

She’s all the blood I’ve ever shed. She’s every time I’ve ever thought of death. She’s every time I’ve ever looked at happiness and thought, ‘That’s not meant for me.

~ Elijah Noble El

I moonlight as the greatest actor. I smile. I choose the comedy mask every time. I tell those who worry that I am fine, that I always will be. There is nothing to gain from these lies. I win no awards, yet I bow. On that stage I tell my life story with the lightest of words, the heaviest of hearts. I bleed for the people who stay and watch. Behold: the comedy, the tragedy. They smile and cheer. They clap for this. And I bow, and I bow, and I bow.

~ Elijah Noble El

The spiritual malady that we speak of so often in recovery circles requires a spiritual solution. Nothing else will ever be enough and nothing else will last.

~ Marta Mrotek

Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.

~ Oprah Winfrey

There's a hard law, mejuffrou, that when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.

~ Alan Paton

I no longer look to my abusers with any expectation– of remorse, or apology or restitution or restoration or relationship. I’m at peace, accepting that they won’t and can’t help me out of the mess they created. But, I’m the best qualified for that job anyway and I’m happy with the job I’m doing.

~ Christina Enevoldsen

Deep down inside, each of us knows what our truths are. It is forgivable to lose them...It is unforgivable not to reclaim them.

~ Holli Kenley

You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.

~ Anne Lamott