Unresolved Pain Quotes

Pain that is not transformed is transmitted.

We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.

My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny.

If your dad died before you were born, yeah, it hurts - but it's not like you had a connection with something that was real. Not to say it's any better - but to have that connection and then have it ripped away was, like, the worst. My dad was such a good dad that when he left, he left a huge scar. He was my superhero.

My father's life was so decimated by his earliest experiences. His mother died when he was 7 years old, which he always said was the worst experience in his life. When he was 8, his father disappeared and he was on his own from the age of 8.

I've been fascinated with the subject of loss for a long time. In particular, I'm interested in how people, consciously or unconsciously, spend their lives replacing the things they lost when they were children.

Over time, the ghosts of things that happened start to turn distant; once they've cut you a couple of million times, their edges blunt on your scar tissue, they wear thin. The ones that slice like razors forever are the ghosts of things that never got the chance to happen.

The day breaks not, it is my heart.

My father died when I was really young, on Christmas Day.

Forgiveness isn’t my best thing. Easier staying pissed. But I’m tired of being pissed all the time. Tired of feeling hurt by stuff that can never be fixed because it is an indelible part of the past.

There are years from my childhood that I cannot remember and I cannot forget.

You must never allow something that happened to you to become a morbidly treasured heirloom that you carry, show people, put back in its black velvet pouch and then tuck back into your jacket where you can keep it close to your heart.

She had won the battle against her memories. But one form of torture remained, untouched by the years, the torture of the word "why?

I finally got the dad I always wanted and then he left. At 18, 19 years old, I was really upset and had to work through that.

For most of my life, I believed that my father had broken many of my bones. They were emotional and psychological bones; things no one could see, things that caused me to limp through life clutching for and holding on to people and situations that often rendered me immobile.

Don't put your life on hold so that you can dwell on the unfairness of past hurts.

The loss of my father marked my life. I'm 88 years old and I'm still mourning him because it's such a drama for me. It was just after my bar mitzvah and it was so tragic. The effect on me, I carry it all my life.

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.

But there is, I have learned, no permanent escape from the past. It may be an unrecognized law of our nature that we should be drawn back, inevitably, to the place where we have suffered most.

The Detective was different. Not that he wasn't a good man; Willie had heard enough about him to understand that he was the kind who didn't like to turn away from another's pain, the kind who couldn't put a pillow over his ears to drown out the cries of strangers. Those scars he had were badges of courage, and Willie knew that there were others hidden beneath his clothes, and still more deep inside, right beneath the skin and down to the soul. No, it was just that whatever goodness was there coexisted with rage and grief and loss.

"Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly"... "And if left unresolved you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place."

I had learned that there were substitutes for a mother who couldn't be a mother. You could find love with other people. You could find it in places you weren't even looking. But the original wound would never heal. I would carry it with me forever, and so would Tara. That was the trick . . . accepting it, going on with your life, knowing it was part of you.

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.

In my adult life, I had spent a lot of time angry at God, mostly over the sudden deaths in my family - my brother at 30, my daughter at 5.

If you are carrying strong feelings about something that happened in your past, they may hinder your ability to live in the present.