“Nothing will come of forcing yourself to compete your way out of trauma.”

Every love does not have to be made of desire. Some loves are kept for the people who stand by you through everything. Some soulmates are sisters not lovers. Some loves are for those who give you hope. And some for the strength, for wisdom, for dreams.

I wish they could see the tenderness in the way the darkness takes the night’s hand.

No one told me love could be a God of both living and dying. That girls who love girls do not just drown, they also float.

We remember that family is not just those of blood. But also those we choose to love.

A war is still a war even if it is inside your head, did you know this?

The loneliest thing you can ever do is take very instance where you should grow and waste it by only thinking how could this happen to you?

Bathe with ice-cold water of the ocean just to feel something again.

Perhaps magic is in the habit of choosing sharp-eyed girls who ask too many questions for their own good. Perhaps it chooses girls who are not unloved, but not fully loved either.

They kept trying to make me less angry, but I refuse to surrender my rage.

It happens suddenly. One day, your parents don’t pick you up any more.

Stop looking for people who only want your beauty and turn away your chaos and darkness.

I know how to live with a blade and teach it not to make me bleed.

I am trying to stop being the ashes that you left behind.

We do not abandon those who truly accept us for who we are.

Womanhood is rich with unlearning. How to unlearn the way you hate your body.

You have to choose between freedom and comfort. You choose freedom. Of course you choose freedom.

There are graveyards inside you made of people that made you ache, made of memories that you barely survived made of trauma and heartbreak. These graveyards need to become gardens where you plant flowers that blossom, for you to let go.

I detest only the violence and trauma that any self-centered conduct can cause to others.

With this film, it’s nice to see that the trauma is presented from a white male that was in the Civil War and that trauma affects him in a way that still exists.

Growing up with sexual abuse and having to be in gangs and dealing with my own trauma; finding the cultural identity when I was 16, and learning those traditional ways saved me from hurting myself.

Sometimes healing comes after helping someone that is going through the same trauma you went through. Help yourself by helping others.

I think quite often we hold onto trauma because we don’t process it.

I’m an egomaniac with an inferiority complex.

Read the scars on my body like braille, for I no longer know how to tell a story that belongs deeply to me but is no longer mine.