#childhood

That night I looked up at those same stars, but I didn't want any of those things. I didn't want Egypt, or France, or far-flung destinations. I just wanted to go back to my life from my childhood, just to visit it, and touch it, and to convince myself that yes, it had been real. ↗

— Jenny Lawson

#nostalgia #life

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat. ↗

— John le Carre

#become #cheat #childhood #detachment #ever

The distance to the corner shops of childhood becomes unfathomable, immeasurable; the candy bars have changed. And change has changed. ↗

— Ilse Aichinger

#childhood #past #age

What sets one Southern town apart from another, or from a Northern town or hamlet, or city high-rise? The answer must be the experience shared between the unknowing majority (it) and the knowing minority (you). All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings #innocence #learning #maya-angelou #change

The stove, she knew, wished it were a volcano, the humble teaspoons wished they were steamshovels, and the sink wished it were a well so all the others could have their wishes. Yet they all stayed exactly the same no matter what they wished, no matter what they saw and heard. ↗

— Georgess McHargue

#childhood #time #wishes #change

The reality is that most of us communicate the same way that we grew up. That communication style becomes our normal way of dealing with issues, our blueprint for communication. It’s what we know and pass on to our own children. We either become our childhood or we make a conscious choice to change it. ↗

— Kristen Crockett

#communication #parenting #parents #change

Throughout our times with Christopher [therapist] we were encouraged to work together at communicating on the inside. He pointed out that it would be good for us all to listen-in when an alter was telling his/her story - that it's now safe, no harm will come to us from telling or from knowing. There was once a time when it was very important that we didn't know what had happened; that knowing meant danger or being so overwhelmed with pain and grief that we wouldn't survive. But now it was different. We're safe and strong, and our goal now are to uncover the grisly truth of what's happened to us, so that it's no longer a powerful secret. We can look at it and face the past for what it is - old memories of old events. Today is now,and we can choose to live a different way and believe different things. We were once powerless and vulnerable, but now we were in a position to make choices. We had control over our life. ↗

— Carolyn Bramhall

#childhood-abuse #dissociation #dissociative-identity-disorder #memories #mental-health

Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did you? Well, Jessie says that the top's growing back out. Next time you'll know how to do it right, won't you? You'll pull it up by the roots, won't you? ↗

— Harper Lee

#courage #inspirational #courage

I sailed through my childhood with a complete lack of any drama. ↗

— Kate Adie

#childhood #complete #drama #i #lack

No matter how much he talked, she never answered him, but he knew she was still there. He knew it was like the soldiers he had read about. They would have an arm or a leg blown off, and for days, even weeks after it happened, they could still feel the arm itching, the leg itching, the mother calling. ↗

— Pat Cunningham Devoto

#death #loss #missing #mother #sadness