Vanessa Diffenbaugh Quotes

I do not believe that I fell in love with a woman because I was abused.

When a person only knows abuse, they shift their whole emotional and spiritual life into the context of that abuse. If all you've ever known is to be hurt by the one that pretends to love you, then many times you go to the one who hurts you for love.

I knew how to read a contract by 10 years old, but I didn't know what it meant for somebody to come in and tell me they loved me and kiss me goodnight. That's a problem.

Love yourself instead of abusing yourself.

When you are abandoned by two parents as a baby - wow, that is something to live with.

You deserve love and you'll get it.

I was never taught how to raise a child, because I wasn't raised properly.

I was a child, and my mother was psychotic. She loved me, but I didn't really feel I had a mother. And when you live with somebody who is paranoid and thinks you're trying to kill them all the time, you tend to feel a little betrayed.

If your parents ignored you, or if they are just not emotionally available, or if they yell a lot, that is a type of trauma.

They say that abandonment is a wound that never heals. I say only that an abandoned child never forgets.

You show me a murderer, and I'll show you a person who's been failed in the supreme need for love, who never learned how to love, and will hate

I've played a worrying number of orphans, children who have been abandoned or had something terrible happen to them.

If you let a man that you love or anybody - man, woman or child that you love - sit there and destroy themselves in front of you, you're neglecting them.

I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you.

Most birds were created to fly. Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around. You, on the other hand, were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around. Living unloved is like clipping a bird’s wings and removing its ability to fly. Not something I want for you. Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly. And if left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place.

I...have a woman in my arms who has suffered greatly and desperately needs to believe once again that she is beautiful.

Most of us need to be reminded that we are good, that we are lovable, that we belong. If we knew just how powerfully our thoughts, words, and actions affected the hearts of those around us, we'd reach out and join hands again and again. Our relationships have the potential to be a sacred refuge, a place of healing and awakening. With each person we meet, we can learn to look behind the mask and see the one who longs to love and be loved.

It took the love of a good man [to heal]. When I was reverting back into my, let's say, perversions, he would say: 'Let's go get an ice cream. I am not going to enable you. If you can only come as a wanton woman for hire, because you feel dirty and shamed, then no. Women are goddesses.' And I know that and I believe that. I chose a man who believed that, too.

It is not the most lovable individuals who stand more in need of love, but the most unlovable

To be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people. That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.

That letter was your whole future, you daft prince." "It was my past. I lost that the night my parents died. But I found you, Deryn. Maybe I wasn't meant to end the war, but I was meant to find you. I know that. You've saved me from having any reason to keep going." "We save each other. That's how it works.

Society teaches us conditional love; i.e., "I love you if you are the way I want you to be."

I guarantee that if you talk to some of the young ladies that are out on the street selling their bodies -if you sit them down and really talk to them - they'll tell you that they've been abused, physically and mentally. They go through this stage where they don't care, because you don't feel like you're worth anything.

The most powerful force in a woman's life is the need to be appreciated, loved and cherished for what she is.

A person didn’t need to be beautiful, they just needed to be loved. But I couldn’t help wanting it. If that was the way I could be loved, to be beautiful, I’d take it