Words that accompany the psychotherapeutic process

A few lines I return to — not as answers, but as companions.

They may speak to loss, repair, relationship, or the possibility of change that does not need to be forced.

That matters to me because psychotherapy is not only about explanation. Sometimes it can also begin with language that comes close to something that has been hard to hold alone.

“Like a filing cabinet, the past is a resource of information for learning, but it is not a place to live.”
— Unknown

“It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.”
— D. W. Winnicott

“There is a crack in everything — that’s how the light gets in.”
— Leonard Cohen

“Your trauma might or might not have started with you, but it could end with you.”
— Unknown

“I am not defined by my scars, but by the incredible ability to heal.”
— Lemn Sissay

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
— Rumi

“And suddenly you realise that silence has the face of the things you’ve lost.”
— La voce del silenzio (lyrics by Paolo Limiti and Mogol, in translation)

“I go out looking for you and find you coming towards me.”
— Yehudah Halevi

“It was a while before we came to realise that our place was the very house of difference rather than the security of any one particular difference.”
— Audre Lorde