Pema Chodron Quotes

For people like me, who have blocked out a chunk of their past, you wonder - if you open that door, if you walk into that room of your memories, what will happen? Will it destroy you or will it make you stronger?

Sometimes you had to take a look at yourself and then look away.

You can run away from home But you can't run away from your pain I sit here alone There's always someone else to blame.

Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?

Of course! It takes a lot of strength to mend a broken heart. Channelising energies into your work helps, but also to be able to accept situations for what they are instead of questioning them helps immensely.

In life, when what has happened happens to you, you don't digest it.

Forgiveness doesn't sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.

All the same, my depression and self-hatred, my desire to mutilate myself with broken bottles, my numbness and crying fits, my inability to get out of bed for days and days, the feeling of the world moving in to crush me, went on and on. But I knew I wouldn't go mad, even if that release, that letting-go, was a freedom I desired. I was waiting for myself to heal.

You, sleeping on your bed of nails. Weeping an ocean beyond the pale. Strange, sorrow is your greatest skill. You're suffering from overkill... Choose whether to laugh or to cry. Menace and promise mingle in your eye. Wait, it's only a matter of time. You know everything will be fine... Rain falls down and the seas run high. When you're by my side we can rise above it. Let me dry all the tears inside. On your way you cannot hide from the howling wind and the roaring tide. You might get hurt but your fears will subside when you at last escape from the tears inside.

Even the mistakes and the pain that you've caused and enacted upon you. That is definitely what I'm trying to capture

You go on. You set one foot in front of the other, and if a thin voice cries out, somewhere behind you, you pretend not to hear, and keep going.

I grew up bar-singing and saw all kinds of ways people tried to outrun their emotional pain. It doesn't work. You end up with the original pain, as well as new pain added on top of it from the tactics you used trying to avoid it in the first place. It's best to take a deep breath, bolster yourself, and walk through it.

Maybe her own tears were the poison that made her grow.

I can tell that you been crying all night, drinking all summer, praying for your happiness, hope that you recover

As the smoke clears, I awaken, And untangle you from me. Would it make you feel better To watch me, while I bleed? All my windows still are broken, But I'm standing on my feet.

Shouldn't letting go be painless if you've never learned how to hold on?

But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.

But I guess that's the way it is. When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost. you mourn for yourself.

Never mind. The self is the least of it. Let our scars fall in love.

I'm a big believer in the idea that while we are the sum of our tears, we are also the product of our choices in how we deal with those tears.

It takes a lot of courage to face up to things you can't do because we feed ourselves so much denial.

You can't heal what you don't acknowledge.

I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.

We all have our painful pasts we have to get through.

I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently.