This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.
Interpretation
Resilience is the ability to endure and navigate through trauma, not forgetting it but carrying it in pieces.
In this quote, Lynda Barry explores the concept of resilience as it applies to children facing trauma. The idea is that while adults may perceive children as forgetting their traumatic experiences, they actually carry these experiences with them in fragmented forms. This 'horrible resilience' suggests that the coping mechanisms children develop are not necessarily healthy, but instead highlight the complexities of how trauma is processed and remembered.
In practice
In a discussion about mental health, this quote can illustrate the hidden struggles of children dealing with trauma.
In my writing class, we never, ever talk about the writing - ever. We never address a story that's been read. I also won't let anyone look at the person who's reading. No eye contact; everybody has to draw a spiral. And I would like to do a drawing class where we could talk about anything except for the drawing. No one could even mention it.
When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere in terms of becoming an artist or becoming famous or whatever it is that people do, but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again.
The radio was on and that was the first time I heard that song, the one I hate. Whenever I hear it all I can think of is that very day riding in the front seat with Lucy leaning against me and the smell of Juicy Fruit making me want to throw up. How can a song do that? Be like a net that catches a whole entire day, even a day whose guts you hate? You hear it and all of a sudden everything comes hanging back in front of you, all tangled up in that music.
The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away. I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.
The minute you understand racism, you're responsible for being racist. It's like eating from the tree of knowledge.
I believe a kid who is playing is not alone. There is something brought alive during play, and this something, when played with, seems to play back.
By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be.
Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not... We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.
In the sick room, ten cents' worth of human understanding equals ten dollars' worth of medical science.
Without dark clouds in our lives, we would never know the joy of sunshine. We can become callous and unteachable if we do not learn from pain.
The tongue like a sharp knife ... Kills without drawing blood.
Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
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