21 Oct
2026
Original quotes by Jonathan Anthony Burkett from Abuse and Betrayal, taken word for word from the book. Share any of them with the credit “— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Abuse and Betrayal.”
“Wherever you are, I want you to hear this first, before anything else: what happened to you was not fair, and it was not your fault.”
“The responsibility belongs to the person who did the harm. Always.”
“Abuse is not always loud. Sometimes it is a slammed door. Sometimes it is a closed one.”
“You are allowed to grieve the person you hoped they were. You are allowed to miss the good parts and still be clear that what they did was wrong.”
“A stranger who lies to you is a nuisance. A loved one who lies to you rearranges your life.”
“You were worth it. You were always worth it. The failure was theirs.”
“And the first person you can learn to trust again, slowly, is you.”
“Family is supposed to be the place you run to, not the place you run from.”
“You did not get to choose where you came from. But you are choosing, every day, what comes after you.”
“In healthy love, you feel more like yourself over time, not less. Your world gets bigger, not smaller. You are not afraid of the person who says they love you.”
“That is what manipulation does. It shrinks your world one choice at a time until you forget you ever had a bigger one.”
“You were not too much. You were not wrong to speak. They were wrong not to listen.”
“Most secrets are not kept with locks. They are kept with smiles.”
“But a peace that requires one person to keep bleeding quietly is not really peace. It is just quiet. And you are allowed to want something better than quiet.”
“Shame and silence feed each other. Shame tells us to hide. Hiding gives shame a dark place to grow.”
“So an imperfect memory is not proof that nothing happened. It is often proof that something did.”
“It was that bad, because it happened to you, and you deserved better.”
“You can grow after something terrible without believing the terrible thing was good.”
“You can stop waiting for an apology without pretending you never deserved one.”
“You did not get the childhood you deserved. That is a sorrow you are allowed to feel, fully, for as long as you need.”
“The child you were could not choose what happened. The adult you are gets to choose what happens next.”
“But peace is not the absence of love. Peace is what love feels like when it is safe.”
“Nothing is wrong with you. Your mind is doing what minds do after trauma. It is trying to keep you alive.”
“But you are not going crazy. You are healing. And a mind that was strong enough to survive is strong enough to find peace.”
“Your body was the place where you were hurt, but it is also the place where you survived. It carried you through. It kept breathing.”
“Wherever you are on this road, you are allowed to be there. Take your time. The door is not locked.”
“That is the quiet heroism of breaking a cycle. You carry something heavy so that the people after you do not have to.”
“Healing does not mean the memory disappears. Healing means the memory loses its power to run your life.”
“There may be days when the memory feels like it is all you are. It is not. It is one part of a much larger life, and that life is still being written.”
“A secret that lived only inside you now lives, at least a little, outside of you. You are no longer the only one who knows.”
“You are allowed to walk away from any source of help that harms you. You are allowed to look for better. Good help exists.”
“You do not owe anyone a goodbye speech. Your safety is reason enough.”
“You do not have to forgive in order to be a good person. Your goodness is not measured by how quickly you excuse the people who harmed you.”
“Whether you forgive or not, here is what I hope for you: that the person who hurt you will not get to keep writing your days.”
“The first person you will have to learn to trust again is the one in the mirror.”
“Loving again is not about forgetting what happened. It is about refusing to let the person who hurt you be the last word on what love can be.”
“Somewhere in your family line, someone decided that pain would be handed down like an heirloom. You get to decide it stops with you.”
“It is never too late for a wound to become a scar.”
“A scar is what happens when a wound is met with care, time and courage until it closes. It means the hurt happened, and it means you healed. Both are true.”
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