Clarissa Pinkola Estes Quotes

It is not enough to forgive; one must forget.

When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.

There is nothing on earth so easy as to forget, if a person chooses to set about it. I'm sure I have as much forgot your poor, dear uncle, as if he had never existed; and I thought it my duty to do so.

Music became a healer for me. And I learned to listen with all my being. I found that it could wipe away all the emotions of fear and confusion relating to my family.

I've been in therapy since I was five, but music goes way, way, way, way, way beyond therapy.

Forgiveness takes time. It is the last step of the grieving process.

I feel like a divorced wife once my book is published and has left me, and hate to be brought back into intimate contact!

The whole point is, we can forget. It’s important that we forget some things. Otherwise we’d go round the world carrying a hodload of stuff we just don’t need.

Sometimes things are better off forgotten.

It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present.

Heart, we will forget him, You and I, tonight! You must forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light.

Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.

Let them go, I tell myself. Say good-bye and forget them. I do my best, thinking of them one by one, releasing them like birds from the protective cages inside me, locking the doors against their return.

Having been through a tremendous amount of emotional pain, to process it properly, to be able to have it make sense and then move it through your body, your mind, your spirit, and be done with it, you really have to address it head-on. Being able to really have the courage enough to truly face it, to truly look at it, to truly feel it.

To be able to forget means sanity.

I think one should forgive and remember .... If you forgive and forget in the usual sense, you're just driving what you remember into the subconscious; it stays there and festers. But to look, even regularly, upon what you remember and know you've forgiven is achievement.

Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.

Laughter brings the swelling down on our national psyche.

Closure is a greasy little word which, moreover, describes a nonexistent condition. The truth, Venus, is that nobody gets over anything.

My biggest advice to people now is that when you go through something traumatic, you've got to go talk to somebody. You've got to be able to understand it, make peace with it inside yourself, and you've got to be able to let it go.

We practice conscious forgetting by refusing to summon up the fiery material, we refuse to recollect. To forget is an active, not a passive, endeavor. It means to not haul up certain materials, or turn them over and over, to not work oneself up by repetitive thought, picture, or emotion.

Any thoughts of guilt, any feelings of regret, had faded. The desert had baked them out.

Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.

Forgetting lets you live without the pain for a moment but remembering hits hard.

And I began to let him go. Hour by hour. Days into months. It was a physical sensation, like letting out the string of a kite. Except that the string was coming from my center.