Neglect Quotes

“But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.”
― Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

“Faith is why I'm here today and faith is why I made it through.”
― Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Neglected But Undefeated: The Life Of A Boy Who Never Knew A Mother's Love

“Let us be the ones who say we do not accept that a child dies every three seconds simply because he does not have the drugs you and I have. Let us be the ones to say we are not satisfied that your place of birth determines your right for life. Let us be outraged, let us be loud, let us be bold.”
― Brad Pitt

“THE WEATHER OF LOVE


Love
Has a way of wilting
Or blossoming
At the strangest,
Most unpredictable hour.
This is how love is,
An uncontrollable beast
In the form of a flower.
The sun does not always shine on it.
Nor does the rain always pour on it
Nor should it always get beaten by a storm.
Love does not always emit the sweetest scents,
And sometimes it can sting with its thorns.
Water it.
Give it plenty of sunlight.
Nurture it,
And the flower of love will
Outlive you.
Neglect it or keep dissecting it,
And its petals will quickly curl up and die.
This is how love is,
Perfection is a delusional vision.
So love the person who loves you
Unconditionally,
And abandon the one
Who only loves you
Under favorable
Conditions.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“If your parents’ faces never lit up when they looked at you, it’s hard to know what it feels like to be loved and cherished. If you come from an incomprehensible world filled with secrecy and fear, it’s almost impossible to find the words to express what you have endured. If you grew up unwanted and ignored, it is a major challenge to develop a visceral sense of agency and self-worth.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.”
― Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“If we feel we are missing out sometimes, it may be because we simply forget to consult the past or neglect to think up its ties with the presence. ("Walking down the memory lane" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Let us not neglect rituals. They can be the watchdogs for the survival of our mental health, warning us when a well-oiled functioning of our life story is about to disrupt. Rituals can be safeguards hindering us from stumbling into the abyss of nothingness. Rituals can be anchor points providing guidance on our potholed path for the future. ("Digging for white gold" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The human ego is the ugliest part of man. We lift up men who only show us darkness, and put down those brave enough to show us the light. Likewise, people engage in darkness when it is light outside, and acknowledge the light only when it is dark. We abandon those fighting for us to cheer behind those fighting against us. And, we only remember good people and God when it is convenient for us, and take them for granted because their doors are always open - only to chase after closed doors and personalities void of substance and truth.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Beauty can be wearing out easily, like glitzy pants, slowly waning through the tiredness of age, the fickleness of neglect, the boredom of habit, or the revenge of poor treatment. ("Absence of beauty was like hell")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“When loneliness is a constant state of being, it harkens back to a childhood wherein neglect and abandonment were the landscape of life.”
― Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence

“[E]verywhere I'm looking at kids, adults mostly don't seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don't want to actually play with them, they'd rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there's a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn't even hear.”
― Emma Donoghue, Room

“….Nothing was inevitable. She had not chosen this way. It was her fate. It had been decided since before time began. It had been decided before she began. Nothing could be done. There was no point in trying. It was way too late. The inevitability of nothing was totally supreme, overriding everything. No way out. No way through. She could only accept the unacceptable. She could only endure the unendurable. Nothing was wrong!

Nothing was wrong and the wrongness of this awesome nothing seeped from her. Some people, only a few, saw it. Some people, only a few felt it. Some people, only a few, recognised it and in recognising it for what it was, raged against it. Through the nothingness, these few reached out for her.

She could not reach back. Through the nothingness, these few fought for her. She could not fight back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few cared for her. She could not care back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few spoke out for her, shattering the frozen silence over and over again. She could not speak out for herself…. “

*I hope this may give some comfort to people who need it. There are good, caring people (whether outside or within yourself, if need be) and you do deserve to be cared for and supported as much as anyone else does."

From “Nothing”, one of the short stories in “Fight! Rabbit! Fight!”
― Laurie Matthew, Fight! Rabbit! Fight!

“Your mind can be your enemy or friend. If you always follow your heart, your mind will feel neglected. If you follow only your mind, your heart will never forgive you. Never ignore your conscience, yet always be conscious of reason. Make your heart and mind friends and you will have peace of mind throughout life's seasons.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“The happy family is a myth for many.”
― Carolyn Spring

“LOVE IS A FLOWER

Treat your relationship
As if you are growing
The most beautiful sacred flower.
Keep watering it,
Tend to the roots,
And always make sure
The petals are full of color
And are never curling.
Once you neglect your plant,
It will die,
As will your relationship.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Early relational trauma results from the fact that we are often given more to experience in this life than we can bear to experience consciously. This problem has been around since the beginning of time, but it is especially acute in early childhood where, because of the immaturity of the psyche and/or brain, we are ill-equipped to metabolize our experience. An infant or young child who is abused, violated or seriously neglected by a caretaking adult is overwhelmed by intolerable affects that are impossible for it to metabolize, much less understand or even think about.”
― Donald Kalsched, Trauma and the Soul: A psycho-spiritual approach to human development and its interruption

“As a child abuse and neglect therapist I do battle daily with Christians enamored of the Old Testament phrase "Spare the rod and spoil the child." No matter how far I stretch my imagination, it does not stretch far enough to include the image of a cool dude like Jesus taking a rod to a kid.”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography

“Children of the mentally ill learn early on how not to be a bother, especially if they grew up with neglect. As my sister insisted once, when she was in severe pain after injuring her ankle, 'This isn't me! This is not who I am!”
― Mira Bartok, The Memory Palace

“Sister, why do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Cage the animals at night?"
"Well..." She looked up and out through the barred window before answering me."We don't want to, Jennings, but we have to. You see, the animals that are given to us we have to take care of. If we didn't cage them up in one place, we might lose them, they might get hurt or damaged. It's not the best thing, but it's the only way we have to take care of them."

"But if somebody loved one them," I asked, "wouldn't it be a good idea to let them have one? To keep, I mean?"

"Yes, it would be. But not everyone would love them and take care of them as you would. I wish I could give them all away tomorrow." She looked at me. There were tears in her eyes. "But I can't. My heart would break if I saw just one of those animals lying by the wayside uncared for, unloved. No, Jennings. It's better if we keep them together.”
― Jennings Michael Burch, They Cage the Animals at Night: The True Story of an Abandoned Child's Struggle for Emotional Survival

“For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling "vaguely guilty.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside

“When Death, or adverse Fortune's ruthless gale,
Tears our best hopes away, the wounded Heart
Exhausted, leans on all that can impart
The charm of Sympathy; her mutual wail
How soothing! never can her warm tears fail
To balm our bleeding grief's severest smart;
Nor wholly vain feign'd Pity's solemn art,
Tho' we should penetrate her sable veil.
Concern, e'en known to be assum'd, our pains
Respecting, kinder welcome far acquires
Than cold Neglect, or Mirth that Grief profanes.
Thus each faint Glow-worm of the Night conspires,
Gleaming along the moss'd and darken'd lanes,
To cheer the Gloom with her unreal fires.”
― Anna Seward, Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace

“You wonder how much abuse you can take and still love someone. You wonder how long they can treat you like nothing but still want them back. You wonder how many years it will take to forget how things used to be, how long you’ll burn yourself with that tiny ember of hope before the deluge of their neglect drowns it.
A long time, in my case. A long, lonely time.”
― Kristan Higgins, Now That You Mention It

“Quick dinner with ... Ang [Lee] and his wife Jane who's visiting with the children for a while. We talked about her work as a microbiologist and the behaviour of the epithingalingie under the influence of cholesterol. She's fascinated by cholesterol. Says it's very beautiful: bright yellow. She says Ang is wholly uninterested. He has no idea what she does.
I check this out for myself. 'What does Jane do?' I ask.
'Science,' he says vaguely.”
― Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

“When we constantly meditate on another's faults, it is because we are neglecting our own unhealed wounds.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“If one abuses or neglects internal powers, external forces will act accordingly.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“Foreign kings and pawn shops place no value on sentiment. According to God’s standards, children should be among mother-Judah’s highest priorities. Public schools seldom notice, or care, when her children are bullied. Babylon sees Israelite youth as a commodity. But, who set that pattern? Revisit verse three, where “instrumental usage” was introduced by mother-Judah.
pg 16”
― Michael Ben Zehabe, Lamentations: how narcissistic leaders torment church and family

“What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always feeling that there were a knife and fork too many, and that mine; an appetite too many, and that mine; a plate and chair too many, and those mine; a somebody too many, and that I! What evenings, when the candles came, and I was expected to employ myself, but, not daring to read an entertaining book, pored over some hard-headed, harder-hearted treatise on arithmetic; when the tables of weights and measures set themselves to tunes, as ‘Rule Britannia’, or ‘Away with Melancholy’; when they wouldn’t stand still to be learnt, but would go threading my grandmother’s needle through my unfortunate head, in at one ear and out at the other! What yawns and dozes I lapsed into, in spite of all my care; what starts I came out of concealed sleeps with; what answers I never got, to little observations that I rarely made; what a blank space I seemed, which everybody overlooked, and yet was in everybody’s way...”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“When did we stop burying those we love with our own hands?”
― Yuri Herrera, The Transmigration of Bodies

“When I was still raw and unformed, everyone failed me. No one was permanent. Back home there were people with good parts to them, but on the whole, they couldn’t be relied on.”
― Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions for You