Quotes About Survivors

Closer to the idea of reparations for slavery, the Florida legislature has paid $150,000 to eight black people, the only living survivors of white racist attacks in 1923 that left twenty-six black people dead in the small black community of Rosewood. The legislature also provided $500,000 to compensate African American families who lost property during the attacks on black homes, churches, and businesses.

It was not until the spring of 1859 [two years later] that the children [the survivors of the murdered emigrant train] were officially turned over to the government officials, and bills for their care were made… The policy of letting the government pay seems to have been general…

Survivors feel unsafe in their bodies. Their emotions and their thinking feel out of control. They also feel unsafe in relation to other people.

In order to gain their freedom, survivors may have to give up almost everything else. Battered women may lose their homes, their friends, and their livelihood. Survivors of childhood abuse may lose their families. Political refugees may lose their homes and their homeland. Rarely are the dimensions of this sacrifice fully recognized.

Most of our informants [incest survivors] remembered their mothers as weak and powerless, finding their only dignity in martyrdom.

For survivors of prolonged, repeated trauma, it is not practical to approach each memory as a separate entity. There are simply too many incidents, and often similar memories have blurred together. Usually, however, a few distinct and particularly meaningful incidents stand out. Reconstruction of the trauma narrative is often based heavily upon these paradigmatic incidents, with the understanding that one episode stands for many.

It has become clear that, as Janet observed one hundred years ago, dissociation lies at the heart of the traumatic stress disorders. Studies of survivors of disasters, terrorist attacks, and combat have demonstrated that people who enter a dissociative state at the time of the traumatic event are among most likely to develop long-lasting PTSD.

In refusing to hide or be silenced, in insisting that rape is a public matter, and in demanding social change, survivors create their own living monument.

The fundamental stages of recovery are establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community

Survivors do not want their injuries to be trivialized or ridiculed, and they do not want to be blamed for them. They do not want to be dismissed as overly emotional or told to "get over it." They want their communities to recognize and respect their suffering and to acknowledge the seriousness of the harm they have endured.

In the face of common prejudices that blame survivors for whatever happened to them, they want assurances from the community that they did not deserve to be abused.

What about those who are tasked with implementing justice but instead ally themselves with the powerful? Often, survivors will feel the bitterness of these betrayals more deeply even than the direct harms inflicted by perpetrators.

Some extraordinary survivors, recognizing that their suffering is part of a much larger social problem, are able to transform the meaning of their trauma by making their stories a gift to others and by joining with others to seek a better world.

Survivors of atrocity of every age and every culture come to a point in their testimony where all questions are reduced to one, spoken more in bewilderment than in outrage: Why? The answer is beyond human understanding.

Para muitas pessoas, o contato com as histórias nunca antes contadas de abuso e desigualdade presentes na peça reforçou uma necessidade de assumir a responsabilidade por seus próprios papéis no ciclo de violência – como vítimas e sobreviventes, testemunhas ou agentes.

He'd considered transferring back to Homicide, tired of seeing rape survivors hung up to dry by a fucked-up—and misnamed—justice system. At least with Homicide the victims never had to face the perpetrators.

History is only written from what remains.

Before I started chemotherapy treatments, I wrote down the best advice from doctors, family, friends, books, and survivors and created an 'Owner's Manual' to help me take care of myself. It would remind me that cancer is doable.

We tend to think of human trafficking as a foreign issue, not something that could happen here in our own back yards. But it's a fast-growing problem in the United States, in every area, with no real defined demographic.

That may have been when they took their vows: We are no longer siblings, we are mates, starship survivors, a two-man crew wandering the crags and crevices of a planet that may not be inhabited by anyone but us.

We found a city of women. Not one Eldren man had remained. Not one boy over twelve. Not one old man of any age. We had slain them all at sea.

Survivors who don't stand up for themselves often develop physical and emotional illnesses. Many become depressed because they feel so hopeless and helpless about being able to change their lives. They turn their anger inward and become prone to headaches, muscle tension, nervous conditions and insomnia.

Most survivors tend to be the care-giver rather than the care-receiver. We tend to be good at being spouses and parents, anticipating our loved ones needs, going the second mile when it came to self sacrifice. But seldom can we ask our loved ones to give to us. We fool ourselves into believing we don't need much.

Some Survivors get angry at having to work at recovering from sexual abuse. They feel that it is unfair. They suffered all their life because of what someone else did to them: why do they have to suffer any more pain? This anger of "having" to do something is similar to the anger they felt at "having" to put up with the abuse.