Karrine Steffans Quotes

Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.

When you go through abuse - the behavior - what happens is all behavior stems from faulty belief.

I think my biggest focus for myself is learning how to continue to get through the trauma that my father has caused in my life.

Being hurt personally triggered a curiosity about how such beliefs are formed.

When you come from so many damaged places you don't ever want to spiral back there, so you gotta continue to check yourself.

By God, I shall spend the rest of my life getting my heart back, healing and forgetting every scar you put upon me when I was a child. The first move I ever made, after the cradle, was to crawl for the door, and every move I have made since has been an effort to escape.

When it comes to how the slaves treat each other: If you've been brutalized all your life - if you have seen your children sold or your mother beaten and raped and you have been tortured yourself - you are not going to be up for your best behaviour. Even in the 21st century, 100 people in the midst of terrible suffering are not going to be their best people.

He beat me like he beat the children. Cept he don't never hardly beat them. He say, Celie, git the belt. The children be outside the room peeking through the cracks. It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how come I know trees fear man.

You slammed my face down on the barbecue grill, now my scars are all healing, but my heart never will.

But my activities have been pretty much focused in the last almost 30 years on the recovery, of my own recovery, the understanding for my family of my recovery.

The thing that always interests me from a storytelling point of view is how that moment of trauma, whatever the trauma is, even divorce, your dog dies, whatever it is, the consequence, in terms of people's emotional lives and the way it resonates behaviorally for a long time, is really the stuff that interests me.

I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.

Every burn on my body has had its own different personality. And all of them needed different things.

What distresses me at times is that I meet a lot of people in their 40's, 50's, 60's, who still say they're a victim of child abuse.

Trauma creates one of four types of people: victims, rescuers, or perps - and if you're really lucky and really strong and very willing and brave, survivors.

I think you see in people's eyes what they've been through. Anything in their lives shows up in their eyes.

Even if a woman is abused a very long time ago, it comes out in her life in a negative way.

Time heals all wounds, unless you pick at them.

Grief is exhausting. When you learn - maybe through my age or experience - trying to harness the energy, whatever it is, muted energy or a concentration to find yourself in a place? You try to use it for when it's really necessary and can arrive.

Daddy loves you, but he smacks you, and he can shout at you and smash things, but Daddy still loves you. So when you get into a relationship with someone who does all of that, why would it be unusual?

My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I'm the son of my history.

In my own life, I believe it was an early education in poetical metaphor that helped me to grapple with and make sense of all the difficult and traumatic things that were to come.

The shock of any trauma, I think changes your life. It's more acute in the beginning and after a little time you settle back to what you were. However it leaves an indelible mark on your psyche.

One day I looked at something in myself that I had been avoiding because it was too painful. Yet once I did, I had an unexpected surprise. Rather than self-hatred, I was flooded with compassion for myself because I realized the pain necessary to develop that coping mechanism to begin with.

I had a very complex childhood, and when I met my wife, because she has a master's in psychology, she promoted me into getting help. It really has helped. I'm not healed yet, but I'm working on some issues I had as a child.