Recovery Quotes

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

~ Gail Caldwell

This time I read the title of the painting: Girl Interrupted at Her Music. Interrupted at her music: as my life had been, interrupted in the music of being seventeen, as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that?

~ Susanna Kaysen

Recovery unfolds in three stages. The central task of the first stage is the establishment of safety. The central task of the second stage is remembrance and mourning. The central focus of the third stage is reconnection with ordinary life.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

But undying memories stood like sentinels in her breast. When the notes of doves, calling to each other, fell on her ear, her eyes sought the sky, and she heard a voice saying, Majella!

~ Helen Hunt Jackson

Turn off your phone, and your computer and your mind. Find your heart center and send it compassion. See the holiness in everyone you meet. Honor it.Know your worth. Know your worth. Know your worth.Accept no less. Become familiar with the space where compromise is unkind. Nurture your exquisite loneliness. Let it teach you. Light candles at every opportunity. Always wear perfume, it helps you remember yourself. Touch your inked ribs lightly when you forget who you are.

~ Jeanette Leblanc

When his wife died, for a while it was the end of the world, because part of him had died with her. As the long, slow recovery proceeded, he had gratefully and guiltily accepted the return of equilibrium. But he had not paid attention to a parallel phenomenon: his reversion to what he had been before his marriage. Though changed by whatever he had learned during their years together, and by whatever healing had taken place, he had fallen back into the old patterns of withdrawal. Nursing the dreadful wound of her absence, he had failed to notice the subtler void opening up within himself.

~ Michael D. O'brien

Death wins nothing here,gnawing wings that amputate––then spread, lift up, fly.

~ Aberjhani

He answered the phone to his daughter with a broken but joyous heart, ready to speak with her of astonishment and wonder.

~ Patrick Ness

We don't get to choose the things that happen to us in life. What we can choose is how to react to them, how we deal with them, and how we move on.

~ Sarah Winter

This rose of pearl-coated infinity transformsthe diseased slums of a broken heartinto a palace made of psalms and gold.

~ Aberjhani

It was a very ordinary day, the day I realised that my becoming is my life and my home and that I don't have to do anything but trust the process, trust my story and enjoy the journey. It doesn't really matter who I've become by the finish line, the important things are the changes from this morning to when I fall asleep again, and how they happened, and who they happened with. An hour watching the stars, a coffee in the morning with someone beautiful, intelligent conversations at 5am while sharing the last cigarette. Taking trains to nowhere, walking hand in hand through foreign cities with someone you love. Oceans and poetry. It was all very ordinary until my identity appeared, until my body and mind became one being. The day I saw the flowers and learned how to turn my daily struggles into the most extraordinary moments. Moments worth writing about. For so long I let my life slip through my fingers, like water. I'm holding on to it now,and I'm not letting go.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

The sky was so blue I couldn’t look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories,but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desktick tick tickme not making a soundand some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind,but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

We can't calm waves, but we can steer the ship.

~ Hayley Long

As we move away from the old role in which we were helplessly entrapped as a victim, we make friends with the people who affirm us. Their enthusiasm about us mirrors the positive experience we are having.

~ Maureen Brady

It's easier to maintain a good character than to recover it when it's gone bad!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Better spend time working hard to maintain your good habits because you may look for time to recover it but to no avail!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

It is a beautiful and scary thing to sit open-handed and let all your plans float away like dust.

~ Anna White

You cannot make yourself have a flashback, nor will you have one unless you are emotionally ready to remember something. Once remembered, the memory can help you to face more of the truth. You can then express your pent-up feelings about the memory and continue on your path to recovery. Think of the flashback as a clue to the next piece of work. No matter how painful, try to view it as a positive indication that you are now ready and willing to remember.

~ Beverly Engel

Human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with whatever we can find … It is disconnection that drives addiction.

~ Christopher Kennedy Lawford

Compassion is the most powerful tool you can have when it comes to healing addictions of any kind. Put simply, what your partner needs most from you is compassion.

~ Christopher Kennedy Lawford

No one consciously chooses addiction to a substance or behavior over his partner. There are always reasons – powerful ones – why a person retreats into addiction.

~ Christopher Kennedy Lawford

It is not a coincidence that you and your partner are together. You each have something to learn from one another …. The most important thing you can do to support your partner in his [or her] recovery is to show that you are truly supportive and on his [or her] side.

~ Christopher Kennedy Lawford

Part of me felt deep compassion. And another part felt like, You fucker.

~ Augusten Burroughs

The word 'survivor' carries a weight of remembrance that has broken the minds and bodies of more than a few men and women. It also contains a humbling light of recognition that compels many to do whatever they can to help reinforce the efforts of those who might be 'at risk' of not just giving up on their dreams, but of giving up on their continued existence.

~ Aberjhani

Some flowers need flames to find their way into this world.

~ Cindy Campopiano

Toxic relationships are dangerous to your health; they will literally kill you. Stress shortens your lifespan. Even a broken heart can kill you. There is an undeniable mind-body connection. Your arguments and hateful talk can land you in the emergency room or in the morgue. You were not meant to live in a fever of anxiety; screaming yourself hoarse in a frenzy of dreadful, panicked fight-or-flight that leaves you exhausted and numb with grief. You were not meant to live like animals tearing one another to shreds. Don't turn your hair gray. Don't carve a roadmap of pain into the sweet wrinkles on your face. Don't lay in the quiet with your heart pounding like a trapped, frightened creature. For your own precious and beautiful life, and for those around you — seek help or get out before it is too late. This is your wake-up call!

~ Bryant Mcgill

Keep up your faith to go high and fly, even after so many pains and sorrow. You can turn from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Life gives you a second change: a call to grow.

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

People don’t need to be forced to grow. All we need is favorable circumstances: respect, love, honesty, and the space to explore.

~ Ellen Bass

If I know something, I am not a victim. Victims don't know the meaning of their suffering. I am an enemy or a collaborator, not a victim.

~ Rachel Klein

It was painful to contemplate the distance between the future of accomplishment I'd imagined for myself twenty years earlier, and the reality...it was painful to understand that the cushion of exceptionality invoked by the drug had made me oblivious to my inertia. And it was painful to have to define myself again, at an age when most people are happy in their own skins.

~ Ann Marlowe

Big mistakes are an outstanding opportunity to showcase your ability to recover and have grace under pressure.

~ Bryant Mcgill

My hand-stitched wings itchto take flightto test the winds of changethat inevitably blow at the end of a cycle.

~ B.g. Bowers

I sometimes marvel at how far I’ve come - blissful, even, in the knowledge that I am slowly becoming a well-evolved human being - only to have the illusion shattered by an episode of bad behaviour that contradicts the new and reinforces the old. At these junctures of self-reflection, I ask the question: “are all my years of hard work unraveling before my eyes, or am I just having an episode?” For the sake of personal growth and the pursuit of equanimity, I choose the latter and accept that, on this journey of evolution, I may not encounter just one bad day, but a group of many.

~ B.g. Bowers

What are humans meant to do, why are we here? Are we a mutation on the earth destroying its host? Are we a cancer destined to kill what supports us? I think not. So exploring this question is a powerful exercise in meaning, what is the meaning of human existence?

~ David W. Earle

One of the hardest things was learning that I was worth recovery.

~ Demi Lovato

I realized that I was okay with myself. I was quirky and withdrawn and loud, but I liked that. I smiled at strangers without thinking they were going to attack me and drag me into their cars. I went to doctors’ offices and touched magazines that had been touched by sick people.

~ Anna White

I know you're in a world of pain, but that pain will lessen. At the beginning you can't see that. You can only see your pain and you think it will never go away.But the nature of pain is that it changes— it changes like a sunset. At first, it's this intense red-orange in the sky, and then it starts getting softer and soften. The texture of pain changes as you work through it. And then one day, you wake up and realize that life isn't just about working through your incest; it's about living, too.- survivor of child sexual abuse

~ Ellen Bass

I don’t think it makes much difference what we’re recovering from, all suffering eventually points to the need for healing.

~ Marta Mrotek

The world has long ceased to be the author of your anguish.

~ R. Scott Bakker

In some ways, com­ing to terms with my­self and work­ing to­ward re­cov­ery has been like say­ing “I love you” to some­one but keep­ing a loaded gun hid­den in your back pocket, just in case that per­son pisses you off enough.

~ Kiera Van Gelder