Shahida Arabi

I love myself. Truly and always, I love myself. And for the first time in a long time, I am putting myself first.

They may romanticize the relationship and re-idealize you, taking back all their hurtful words and actions in one fell swoop (or cleverly constructed text message).

I am the truth, your karma, the revolt — I am the resistance, the pieces you tried to keep shattered, coming back together again.

Survivors have to regain the certainty that the reason they experienced such a pathological reaction was because they were so powerful in the first place.

You don’t have to justify to anyone the reasons you didn’t leave right away.

Falsehoods about parents always being loving and having our best interests at heart simply do not cut it when it comes to manipulative, toxic and abusive parents.

Philosophies that depict pain as an illusion rather than a legitimate, lived reality can be downright dangerous. They encourage victim-blaming and spiritual bypassing that harms the survivor more than they help. What we have to remember is that our perceptions of trauma are not due to erroneous thinking – they are due to egregiously damaging acts of emotional and physical violence.

The abuse cycle relies on hot and cold, mean and sweet behavior, which means nice actions after an abusive incident cannot be taken at face value, but rather as embedded in a chronic pattern of behavior.