People expected certain things of me: assistance, silence, comfort. They had no idea who I was.

Even as a small child, I understood that woman had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity.

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

As Louis Cozolino Ph. D., observes, a consistent theme of adult psychotherapy clients is that they had parents who were not curious about who they were but, instead, told them who they should be. What Cozolino explains, is that the child creates a "persona" for her parents but doesn't learn to know herself. What happens is that "the authentic self"--the part of us open to feelings, experinces, and intimicy--remains underdeveloped.

You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations.

Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.