Quotes from Jasmin Lee Cori

the quality of the mothering we receive so powerfully shapes our development.

It is not easy to give of yourself if you still have many unmet needs. Yet, mothering requires constant giving.

Studies in Sweden found that even when a mother works outside the home and the father is the primary caretaker, babies still strongly prefer being with the mother.1

Breaking free of limiting beliefs is like breaking the chains that bind you.

Mothers don't need to be perfect, and can't be. The perfection, when there, is supplied through the eyes of the child—who, when the mother does a good-enough job meeting her basic needs, feels total adoration

Nurturing touch has all sorts of physiological benefits, including promoting the growth of the nervous system, stimulating the immune system, and decreasing stress hormones, but let's focus on the emotional and psychological value. It is through nurturing touch that we feel loved, soothed, and protected.

Mom and apple pie are potent symbols, venerated in our national psyche but neglected in national policy, as reflected, for example, in our meager family leave policies in comparison with other developed countries. If we were really serious about mothering, we would provide more financial and in-home help as well as education for mothers. As it currently stands, mothers are held up on a pedestal with little support beneath them.

You could even say it was the trauma that was the call for help, and of course if there are any spiritual beings who respond to such need, it is angels.

When consciousness is dissociated, you may find yourself feeling as if you or the world around you isn't fully real. This is most often a reaction to severe stress and trauma. The main difference between these two conditions is that depersonalization relates to your experience of yourself as a person, whereas derealization relates to your perception of the environment as amplified below.

If you can access the sense of your inherent preciousness, you can rise above shame. If you can meditate and feel equanimity, you may be able to rise above your distress.

The outcome—today's technological civilization with its massive psychopathologies and unending ecological disasters—is a collective reflection of the traumatized personality."1

He had not felt loved by his mother and had experienced difficulty in receiving love since, so he didn't have some of the healing vectors that can counteract traumatic events. He had resources to help others but not the resources to save himself.

To make matters worse, they are often further traumatized by their present circumstances (for example, prisoners are raped, street people are attacked, mental health patients may experience helplessness during forms of treatment perceived as violent, and so on).

From an evolutionary perspective, we first developed a survival brain (called the reptilian system), then an emotional brain (the limbic system), and finally a thinking brain (the neocortex).

As Babette Rothschild says, "Often talking about what happened will be important for the survivor in the immediate aftermath of the event. Telling and re-telling the story to caring individuals may help prevent dissociation, and aid in integrating the experience."20

The more you can see options, the quicker you can regain a sense of control.

As it relates to healing the wounds of trauma, it is a journey from helplessness (which is the essence of trauma) to mastery.

We find the heaven within us when we recover our own preciousness; we find the heaven between us when another tenderly helps us heal; we find the heaven around us when, moving from hell to well, we find in the ordinary world the beauty and meaning that was earlier bleached out of it. And some, too, find a heaven of angels, which may pierce through the veils of our lives in moments of need or when our spiritual search takes us there.

Our goal is to move from being stuck in survival mode back into blossoming and into life. We want to thrive, not just survive.

The surrender was a turning point for me. That summer I cried nearly every day. It was part of letting up the emotional component that had been only partially present in much of my earlier recovery of memories, and the beginning of a deeper grieving for my losses. The crying itself did not resolve things for me, but it was part of what prepared me for what came later, when the opportunity presented itself to really cleanse the wounds with a qualified trauma therapist.

Even traumas that we have pushed outside our consciousness affect us deeply. They affect our nervous systems, our bodies, our reactions to events, our choices, our feelings about ourselves and others, and many other aspects of our experience. Out of sight is not out of bodymind.

You experience a change in how you see yourself, transitioning from feeling like a victim to someone who has not only survived but has healed.

Another way to talk about this thin-skinned quality is to say that trauma tends to make you more reactive. Reactivity here means having a bigger reaction than the situation calls for, whether it is more fear, more insecurity, more anger, more mistrust, or more of any other emotion. We all get reactive at times, yet those who are caught in trauma-related disorders become reactive a lot of the time.

Living with a high level of emotional reactivity is hell. It's no fun for you and no fun for people around you. You feel sensitive about everything and feel like life never lets you rest. Being reactive is essentially feeling chronically overwhelmed.