brainweaves

hi! i'm weaves. i'm a cptsd survivor on the long walk to healing. in this blog i will share quotes from books i am reading that have resonated with me, in hopes that they speak to you too.

[brainweaves]

"I had no vocabulary to express my confusion, my fears, my view. A child has no vocabulary power, so adults rape children thinking the children don’t know what’s happening. Children do know—but children have no language to communicate it. It’s like being a prisoner in a foreign country, and not knowing the language."

- Incest and Sexuality: A Guide to Understanding and Healing, by Wendy Maltz & Beverly Holman

[brainweaves]

"I'm trying to negotiate a way to still be in this world. Therapy sometimes feels like a very clever conjuring trick — one you play on yourself, or at least collude in. We know the world can be a bad place. We discuss it at length. We know very bad things happen here. We know they have happened repeatedly to me. We have examined, forensically, whether this has been my fault, and concluded, logically, that it has not. But it's strange how you can know something logically in your brain, and still not really feel it's true. It's been taking some time for this particular idea to sink in for me."

- Vicky Foster, "It happened like this."

[brainweaves]

"I want to not love you. I do a lot of this. Wanting not to love. Love pouring out of me anyway. It has been my downfall, or so I thought for a long time. Now I see it was not love, but the things I thought had to come with it. I don't want you taking up space in me, and yet here I am, insides dropping open in that way they've learned to do. Space opening up between my heart and lungs and spleen. Space that doesn't exist and yet is there anyway. I wonder if that can be what causes all the tummy aches. I wonder if this is why, some mornings, I'm so heavy. The weight of more people than myself is being dragged across my pillows to find the floor. I wonder why I can't shut it off. I wonder if I would, if I could."

- Vicky Foster, "It happened like this."

[brumleys-bones]

My therapist told me to post this lol

[pmamtraveller]

Luca Ponsato - Does Anyone See My Suffering

[brainweaves]

"When I talk to people [with cptsd], almost nobody says, "Oh, I walked around and knew that's what happened to me." No, it's more common for people to say, "No, I didn't remember until one day something triggered me and it came out." It's the way we survive. I'm kind of thankful for that because I had some years where I could just breathe. And so I think the beauty of having to recover it is it comes back at a time when I'm now available and have the strength and resources to go there. There's this really strong beautiful fiber that's built in us to say: "I'll be back one day, but that day is not today." What what are we going to do with it as a child? We have no idea what to do with it as a child." 📽️Jodie Tedder youtube interview (2026)

[brainweaves]

"But what was I supposed to do with those feelings? Catalog them? Sit there thinking about them all day long? Tell them to my mommy and expect sympathy? Please. My feelings don't matter. They were pointless. If I felt all of those soft, mushy feelings, if I really thought about how messed up it was that my mother threatened to kill me on a regular basis, could I wake up and eat breakfast with her every day? Could I sit on the couch at night and cuddle her to keep her warm? No.

If I took up all that space with my feelings, what space could I maintain for hers? Hers were more important. Because hers had greater stakes."

What My Bones Know - Stephanie Foo (2022)

[brainweaves]

"The more I read, the more every aspect of my personhood is reduced to deep diagnostic flaws. I hadn't understood how far the disease has spread. The things I want. The things I love. The way I speak. My passions, my fears, my zits, my eating habits, the amount of whiskey I drink, the way I listen, and the things I see. Everything — everything, all of it — is infected. My trauma is literally pumping through my blood, driving every decision in my brain."

What My Bones Know - Stephanie Foo (2022)

[brainweaves]

"Every situation had to be handled with infinite care, if there was to be any chance of cooperation. I couldn't simply say, "Put on your shoes, it's time to go." Jodie would have to believe that it was her decision, and that she was in control. I knew where this had come from. When Jodie was being abused she had had no control over anything, so now she needed to be constantly in charge, just to feel safe. Unfortunately for me, the result of this was that even the simplest request would be met with a stubborn refusal, unless she could be persuaded that she herself had made the decision."

Cathy Glass - Damaged (2006)

[brainweaves]

"We walked past the various shop fronts with their colourful signs and enticing displays, and I remembered how excited I'd felt as a little girl, being taken out shopping by my parents. I could still remember my initial thrill at the strange sights in the fishmonger's window, and the mysterious smells at the shoe-mender's. I looked sadly at Jodie, who was staring straight ahead, alert for danger, and oblivious to the sensory pleasures around her. The world was not a place she could enjoy like any normal child; it lacked excitement and stimulation for her. She had been deadened to everything because of what she had suffered. It was heartbreaking." Cathy Glass - Damaged (2006)

[brainweaves]

"When you do a jigsaw puzzle you start with the corners, then hunt out the edges, then try to pull them into order. Finally you can think about looking for some sense in the middle section. Without knowing it, that's how my early years felt. And without understanding why, the older I got, I was happy if I could just get the borders lined up."

All of Me - Kim Noble (2011)

[brainweaves]

"Parents, professionals, teachers, adults in general cannot believe these children because they do not want to believe them. To acknowledge the truth of what victims are trying to tell us forces us to re-examine too many cherished beliefs - beliefs about the absence of childhood sexuality, beliefs about the protection significant adults in a child's life are supposed to provide and, most important, beliefs about a society in which such things can happen. It is easier for us to sweep truth under the rug of our traditional assumptions, because to face truth squarely is too risky and dangerous."

Conspiracy of Silence - Sandra Butler (1978)

[brainweaves]

"I think I have spent so much of my life seeing how they have suffered in their lives that I have just not permitted myself to feel the rage that's in me for having been abused.

Much of the anger I carry around inside me about my parents is directed at the world because I cannot understand. Somewhere deep inside me I'm furious that the world would have let my father and my mother betray me.

There's a real anger at the unfairness that people I saw every day, who heard what went on through the windows, didn't try to help. And because it was never vented out, it's still with me. But it's not just rage, though. It's sadness. I just haven't been able to say, 'Well, that's the way life is. People suffer.' There's this sad place inside that says, 'It didn't have to be that way.'

It was so hard when I was a kid, not being able to ask for help, not being able to get it from a world that just didn 't care. But I feel a real sense of responsibility to other people now who have suffered the kind of pain and loss that I have. Because I know what it feels like. It's sort of like a deal that I made. Okay, God, get me through this and I'll be good. You know? And I do feel like I have to help people. Because if I don't, maybe I'll kill them.

But that pain is human pain. What made my parents do what they did to me? And what made the neighbors not listen? And what made the teachers not answer? Were all the people running from that pain?

I know that I explain and rationalize and defend because there have been so few people, when I was young, when I was growing up, or even now, that have been able to give me some simple human comfort, kindness or help."

Conspiracy of Silence - Sandra Butler (1978)