“Often children who survive extremely adverse childhoods
have learned a particular survival strategy. I call it ‘strategic
detachment.’ This is not the withdrawal from reality that leads to
psychological disturbance, but an intuitively calibrated disengagement
from noxious aspects of their family life or other aspects of their
world. They some how know, This is not all there is. They hold the
belief that a better alternative exists somewhere and that someday they
will find their way to it. They persevere in that idea. They somehow
know Mother is not all women, Father is not all men, this family does
not exhaust the possibilities of human relationships-there is life
beyond this neighborhood. This does not spare them suffering in the
present, but it allows them not to be destroyed by it. Their strategic
detachment does not guarantee that they will never know feelings of
powerlessness, but it helps them not to be stuck there.”
Tag: quotes
Fairy tales are more than moral lessons and time capsules for cultural commentary; they are natural law. The child raised on folklore will quickly learn the rules of crossroads and lakes, mirrors and mushroom rings. They’ll never eat or drink of a strange harvest or insult an old woman or fritter away their name as though there’s no power in it. They’ll never underestimate the youngest son or touch anyone’s hairpin or rosebush or bed without asking, and their steps through the woods will be light and unpresumptuous. Little ones who seek out fairy tales are taught to be shrewd and courteous citizens of the seen world, just in case the unseen one ever bleeds over.
The women say, the men have kept you at a distance, they
have supported you, they have put you on a pedestal, constructed with an
essential difference. They say, men in their way have adored you like a
goddess or else burned you at their stakes or else relegated you to
their service in their back-yards.
— Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères, p. 61.
Disrespect also can take the form of idealizing you and
putting you on a pedestal as a perfect woman or goddess, perhaps
treating you like a piece of fine china. The man who worships you in
this way is not seeing you; he is seeing his fantasy, and when you fail
to live up to that image he may turn nasty. So there may not be much
difference between the man who talks down to you and the one who
elevates you; both are displaying a failure to respect you as a real
human being and bode ill.
— Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That, p. 115-116.
If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.
Generally, it is a good idea to face your fears and delusions yourself, rather than inflict them upon the world around you.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
— Carl Jung
Children see magic because they look for it.
Christopher Moore
“On a popular level there was often little difference between a fairy and an angel, saint, ghost, or devil.”
It simply bears repeating.
— Emma Wilby, on spirit belief in
Early Modern
Britain: Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits.
I don’t know how to talk about the rabbit hole without accidentally inviting you to follow me down it.
סלומה 