“The parent-child connection is the most powerful mental health intervention known to mankind.”

Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.

Trauma really does confront you with the best and the worst. You see the horrendous things that people do to each other, but you also see resiliency, the power of love, the power of caring.

People have a range of capacities to deal with overwhelming experience.

The power of commitment, the power of commitment to oneself, the knowledge that there are things that are larger than our individual survival. And in some ways, I don’t think you can appreciate the glory of life unless you also know the dark side of life

You can’t see the glory of life if you haven’t seen the dark side of life.

The single most important issue for traumatized people is to find a sense of safety in their own bodies.

My parents taught me: Do not rely on a man. Not rely on it that you get married and it pays for you. That’s what I figured. I have always paid my own bills.

…I had to point at Hanna. But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. I tried to tell myself that I had known nothing of what she had done when I chose her.

In view of this and other things, I demand forgiveness for being so obviously impressed with my own parents.

Both of my parents are surfers, of course, so they understood where my passion for surfing was at and I guess they saw the talent that I had.

My parents, products of the Great Depression, were successful people, but lived in a state of constant fear that my sister and I, and they, would sink into the kind of economic insecurity that their generation knew so well.

My parents were not pushy or anything like that. I think my mom was still expecting me to be an astronaut, but now she is very happy that I’m not doing that.

Although I was born to famous parents, I know and feel the problems of ordinary citizens.

Physical punishment teaches children that the larger, stronger person has the power to get his way, whether or not he is in the right, and they may resent this in the parent-for life.