01UndatedThe bridge out of shame is outrage. Suddenly the obvious becomes stunningly clear—we have been carrying shame for the crime of the offender…In a clear flash we may see ourselves standing in a fierce stance, grounded by our knowledge, ready to throw off any wrongdoer. Our outrage can be a fueling energy, capable of making us as steely as we need to be.Maureen Brady / quote ↗
02UndatedIt is a childish notion that once established, our boundaries will never be transgressed again...We shall have to stand for ourselves repeatedly for the rest of our lives. As we practice doing this, we come to greater ease...Eventually it may float over entirely into the positive realm—becoming only another chance to demonstrated our worthiness.Maureen Brady / quote ↗
03UndatedYour instincts may tell you that you can’t survive if you experience feelings. But they are leftover child instincts. They’re the ones that first told you to freeze your feelings. They themselves are frozen and haven’t grown with the rest of you. These instincts don’t know that you’re far more capable of learning to cope with overwhelming emotion now than when you were a [child].Maureen Brady / quote ↗
04UndatedIt is not my wish to stay home so much that I become isolated, but to use the comforting influence of my home to restore and gather myself after each step I take in my expanding ability to participate in the world.Maureen Brady / quote ↗
05UndatedMany of us learned that keeping busy…kept us at a distance from our feelings...Some of us took the ways we busied ourselves—becoming overachievers & workaholics—as self esteem…But whenever our inner feeling did not match our outer surface, we were doing ourselves a disservice…If stopping to rest meant being barraged with this discrepancy, no wonder we were reluctant to cease our obsessive activity.Maureen Brady / quote ↗
07UndatedDenial protected us, screening out certain experiences & feelings until we grew strong enough to relate to them...Yet it also dropped a curtain over our experience, obscuring it, leaving us with a sense of missing pieces. For instance, when we achieved something, we felt like an imposter. Or, though we had a relationship with a significant other, we often felt alone and unrelated to anyone.Maureen Brady / quote ↗