A Quote by Diane Arbus
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.
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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience.
Part of what makes a situation traumatic is not talking about it. Talking reduces trauma symptoms. When we don't talk about trauma, we remain emotionally illiterate. Our most powerful feelings go unnamed and unspoken.
As they say in the bible, that you're supposed to rejoice when people die and mourn when they're born, because it's one of the most painful acts you go through in life, is being born, and dying.
I was in the orphanage in New Orleans until I was almost a year old. I don't think I ever got held by my mama, so that was completely and utterly traumatic. I think it was trauma from the first breath, and I think I've spent my whole life trying to heal from that trauma. So it shaped my brain.
Life is rather a state of embryo, a preparation for life; a man is not completely born till he has passed through death.
For 10 minutes, I was somebody's mother, and that was both the most traumatic and also the most transcendent experience of my life.
We're painting the same people all our life - it's just the way we look at them that changes. If you experience trauma, you can speak about it in so many different ways. You can speak about landscape, you can speak about your food; it's always different. Trauma is the beginning of life as an artist.
This life is a test-it is only a test. If it had been an actual life, you would have received further instructions on where to go and what to do. Remember, this life is only a test.
Most of the women placed in the fire department here in New York never passed the physical test. And a fat guy or a short guy, or anybody not passing the test in a life-or-death job, leads to friction.
I feel like in my life, when I've gone through during some traumatic things, I go so inward and I shut the world out and I become - I don't want to use the word selfish because it's hard circumstances, but when I go through hard stuff, it's difficult for me to communicate with other people, let alone stand up for other people's rights.
After my brush with the suicidal impulse, I listen with new ears to others when they speak on the subject. I think there are people who were born with that little door open, and they have to go through life knowing that they might jump through it at any moment.
Most people do not benefit from psychoanalysis because the trauma lies not in this life but in a past life.
The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.
Everything in life serves as a challenge and test to elevate us. Therefore it is right to be grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow through tackling this real life experience.
And we passed through the cavern of rats. And we passed through the path of boiling steam. And we passed through the country of the blind. And we passed through the slough of despond. And we passed through the vale of tears. And we came, finally, to the ice caverns.
It's not what you go through, but how that experience affects you. For some people, it could be a near car crash that changes your life. For other people, it could take five years of going to prison for them to realize they need change in their life. So it's not really the experience but more how the experience affects you.
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